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THE FIVE EMPIRES: 



dDutlte of Storiwtt listed 



1/ 

ROBERT ISAAC WILBERFORCE, M.A. 

ARCHDEACON TO THE EAST RIDING ; CHAPLAIN TO HIS GRACE THE ARCHBISHOP Or 
YORK.: AND LATB FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE. 




Eighth <£&ttton« 



LONDON: 
JOHN HUGHES, 12, AYE MARIA LANE 

J. MASTERS, 78, NEW BOND STREET; 

J. H. PARKER, 377, STRAND, AND OXFORD. 

AND J. AND C. MOZLEY, DERBY. 



1852. 



W'^ LONDON 



FRtXTEP BY ROGEBSON AND TUXFORD, 
24G, STRAND 



4 



</* 



HIS GRACE, 

EDWARD, 

BY DIVINE PROVIDENCE, 

LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORK AND 

METROPOLITAN, 

THIS WORK IS BY PERMISSION INSCRIBED, 

IN TOKEN OP 

RESPECT AND AFFECTION. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

&nte&tlubtan &ge. 

PA.GB 

rhe two races —Lamech — Enoch — Flood ...... 1 

CHAPTER II. 

©fie lEartl) people. 

Nimrod— Babel 8 



CHAPTER III. 

&fie glssgrtan, or Jptrst great lEmpire. 
Nimrod — Semiramis — Sardanapalus .... ... 12 

CHAPTER IV. 
®fie &all of gftrafjam. 17 

CHAPTER V. 

Jfetstorg of 3Sgj?pt. 
Origin of its inhabitants — Sesostris — Pyramids — Necho 20 

CHAPTER VI. 
%\)t 3ExoUus of Israel. 

Israel's typical character — The law — Preparation for 
Christ's Church 27 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VII. 

Israel— it* Surges, ^ropfjets, an& icings. 

PAOH 

Samson— Samuel — Schools of the prophets — Solomon- 
Commerce of Tyre — Petra — Edom — Ports on the Red 
Sea— Balbec and Tadmor — Temple — Solomon's sins 
and punishment 31 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Israel an& 3fuUaf). 

Jeroboam — New mode of worship — Ahab — Elijah — 
Captivity of Israel — Election passes to Judah ... 43 

CHAPTER IX. 

&s3grum ISmpCre restore. 
Hezekiah — Isaiah— Prophets — Chaldees — Babylon — its 
commerce and splendour — Captivity of Judah — Tyre 
— Apries — Prophecy of the Five Empires 49 

CHAPTER X. 

^Persian, or %t tontj great lEmpto. 
Cyrus — Croesus — Oracle at Delphi — Babylon taken — 
Daniel — Temple restored — Cambyses — Smerdis the 
Magian — Darius Hystaspes — Scythian Expedition . . 63 

CHAPTER XI. 

©rm'an, or &f)tr& great ©mpto. 
Office of the Third Empire — Character of the Greeks — 
their independence — their connexion — Homer — 



CONTEXTS. IX. 

PAGE 

Sparta — Object and measures of Lycurgus — Xerxes' 
expedition against Greece — Numbers of his army — 
Thermopylae — Athenian character — Solon — Pisis- 
tratus — Wooden walls — Themistocles — Salamis — 
Plataea — Consequences of the Persian expedition . . 78 

CHAPTER XII. 

Athenian Attempt at establishing the CSfrerian iampire. 
Spartans unfit for rule — Aristides — Athens fortified — 
Allies rendered dependent — Athenian and Spartan 
alliance — Peloponnesian war — Brasidas — Alcibiades 
— Sicilian expedition — iEgospotamos — Athens taken 93 

CHAPTER XIII. 

She spiritual ittmg&om of the ©mian philosophers. 
Attempt to improve man's character — Poetry and the 
arts — their little effect — Plague at Athens — The 
Sophists — Pythagoras — Ionic school — Socrates — the 
four schools of his disciples — Plato — Philosophy fails 
of raising human nature 100 

CHAPTER XIV. 

ifcf treat of the Sen fthousarrt— &hehes aims at the 
©mpive of Greece. 
State of Persia — Ezra— Old Testament completed — Cyrus 
the younger- — Battle of Cunaxa — Persian treachery — 
Xenophon— Return of Greeks — Agesilaus — Thebes-- 
Epaminondas — Improvement in the art of war — 
Leuctra — Laconia ravaged — Manthieea. - - 109 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XV. 



Beuelopment of tfje <£f)tr& Empire — &lexanoer 
tf)* ©teat. 

PAGB 

Philip of Macedon — Alexander — Daniel's prophecy — 
Invasion of Asia — Battle of Granicus — Issus — Tyre 
taken — Arbela — Bactria and India invaded — Alexan- 
der's plans, and death 115 

CHAPTER XVI. 

&lexanoer's Successor*. 

The "four notable horns" — Jews — Septuagint — Anti- 
ochus Epiphanes — Maccabees — Antiochus stopped by 
the Romans 122 

CHAPTER XVII. 

2&oman, orjFourth great 3Emp(re. 

Early constitution — Patricians — Plebeians — Invasion of 
Gaul — Punic wars — Hannibal — Wars with Alexander's 
successors — Roman character impaired — Gracchi — 
Marius — Sylla — Pompey— Julius Caesar — Augustus — 
Universal empire — Peace throughout the Roman world 127 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Our lord's ©ommg— Z$t ItmgDom of 3§jeaben. 

Prophecies fulfilled — Our Lord's birth — Wise men — 
Herod — Our Lord as Prophet, Priest, and King — His 
Empire, wherein like the four preceding ones — Means 
of admission into it — Prophecies of its durability. . .145 



CONTENTS. X3 

CHAPTER XIX. 

&tje Apostles— €i)t ©Jjttrcfj fsta&liglje&. 

PAGE 

Faith of the Apostles — Day of Pentecost — Gospel first 
preached to Jews — Gentile converts — Council at Je- 
rusalem — Two orders of ministers besides the college 
of Apostles — St. James — St. Paul at Athens and Rome 
— Pastoral epistles — Question whether the Jewish 
system would continue — decided by destruction of 
Jerusalem — Jews banished Palestine — Meeting of 
Apostles in Judaea — Universal establishment of the 
order of Bishops 154 

CHAPTER XX. 

^poetoltc pien— &fje itmg&om of ©fjrfat 
*.Ttentre&. 

Difficulties of the first successors of the Apostles— Our 
Lord's presence with His Church — Unity the sustain- 
ing principle of His kingdom — St. Clement — St. Ig- 
natius -^-Reasons for unity — maintained by community 
in worship and ordinances — Martyrdom of St. Igna- 
tius — The Christian city — Christian patriotism — He- 
gesippus — Gnostics opposed by testimony of early 
Church — Irenseus — Great importance of Church-sys- 
tem in the infancy of Christ's kingdom — The Church 
of England appeals to its authority — Rapid advance of 
the Fifth Empire — Concord within, and outward pro- 
tection 168 



XII CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

35arlg Srijtsmatfrs— ^ftontanus anU ftobatfan. 

PAQB 

Principle of schism — Montanus — Tertullian — N ovatian 
— State of Christians during the Decian persecution — 
Puritans — Pacian — Christ's kingdom reunited . . 193 

CHAPTER XXII. 

2H)e ©Ijurtfi'a Fictorg— ©onstantme— ©fte jFtfti) 
Ifct'ngtiom. 

Reign of Diocletian — Marcellus — Persecution — Martyrs 
in Palestine — Constantine — Vision of the Cross — the 
worldly power chosen to behold it — Christ's kingdom 
established 203 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

Interval of tranquillity — Arian controversy — Constantine 
— Vain effort to obviate discussion — Council sum- 
moned at Nice — Arians silenced — their political in- 
trigues — Theodosius — Council of Constantinople — 
Approach of barbarians — -impending destruction of 
the Roman Empire — its final homage to the Fifth Em- 
pire — Close of Ancient History 217 






THE FIVE EMPIRES. 



CHAPTER I. 
&ntefitlubtan &ge. 

THE tWO RACES LAMECH — ENOCH — Fl 

B.C. 4004. 

Thou art the source and centre of all minds, 
Their only point of rest, Eternal Word. 



CowpHtt. 




HE original object of man's being is 
sufficiently declared by the manner of 
his creation : " God created man in 
His own image, in the image of God 
created He him; male and female 
created He them. And God blessed them, and 
said, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the 
earth, and subdue it." 1 To set forth upon earth 
God's image, and to rule all creatures for their 
happiness, man was sent into the world. 

By means of that natural perfection which he 
had from God's image within, and of God's outward 
presence, which would doubtless communicate to 
him gifts above nature, he might have continued in 
this happy state. He fell, however ; he was cut ofi 

» Gen. i. 27-8. 
B 



2 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

from God's outward presence ; and God's image 
within became corrupted and debased. Yet even 
then he was not altogether forsaken ; and the course 
of his history declares by what means it has pleased 
God to renew in some measure His lost image, and 
to give hopes hereafter of its perfect restoration. 
The end of man's existence since the fall has been 
to compass this object; and with a view to it, he 
has had to learn, first, what is the weakness and 
degradation of his corrupted nature ; and, secondly, 
in what manner he may regain that purity which 
has been lost. 

A promise on this subject was given to our first 
parents ; and as it was a promise, the attainment of 
which did not rest with themselves, but was to be 
consequent upon the multiplication of their race, 
therefore it taught them that the recovery of God's 
image was to be bestowed upon mankind not as 
separate beings, but as portions of a family ; not 
as individual subjects of the King of heaven, but 
as joint members of His community upon earth. 
Mankind, therefore, did not originally run wild 
through the forests, like the savages of America, — 
they did not unite, as some have supposed, because 
they anticipated the blessings of civilisation, — but 
their hopes were anchored upon a promise which 
could be fulfilled only by their first becoming mem- 
bers of a family, and then of that larger family 
which is called a nation. Thus arose human so- 
ciety, out of the common expectation of the rege- 
neration of men. Its course was long, painful, and 
complicated ; and oftentimes none but He who sees 
the end from the beginning could have perceived 
that it advanced. For if its second stage has shewn 
what great benefits have been bestowed upon man- 
kind by the restoration of God's image through 
Jesu3 Christ, yet its earlier state was but a proof 



THE TWO RACES. O 

that mere human efforts would not suffice for its 
recovery. For how could human society attain 
any perfection, seeing that men speedily forgot the 
object of its existence? From which it followed, 
that since one half of the human race was weaker 
than the other, and that in each sex there were 
differences both in mind and body, all respect was 
lost for those who, as possessors of an immortal 
spirit, had as much right as the strongest, wisest, or 
wealthiest, to their place among the community of 
mankind. Throughout the ancient world women 
were treated either with cruelty or contempt ; and 
slaves were trodden under foot as though they had 
not been of the same blood with their masters. It 
was reserved for the Church to loose the fetters of 
slavery, to preach the Gospel to the poor, and to 
give " due honour to the weaker vessel " in the 
household of God. 

That such would be the state of society was 
obvious, even when it took its first departure from 
the family of the common parents of mankind. 
From them sprang two races — the sons of God, 
and the children of men — the respective forerunners 
of the world and of the Church. The children of 
Seth built their social life upon that divine system 
in which they were placed, and lived in expectation 
of the promise of the world's recovery. Cain and 
his family were driven out from God's presence, and 
sought by their own contrivance to supply what 
seemed irreparably lost. Society arose in both from 
that family-relation in which God had placed them ; 
mankind were bound together not by voluntary 
agreement, but by natural affinity ; and the nation 
was but a w r ider household. But though society 
itself had thus a divine principle, yet the contrivan- 
ces which minister to it>— the arts of life, the means 
of security — these had a human origin, and were 



THE FIVE ExMPIKES. 



produced by the self-interest and necessities of man. 
Seth dwelt with his father Adam ; and when his 
first child was born, we read of no consequence but 
the establishment of God's public worship. " Then 
began men to call upon the name of the Lord." 2 
No doubt the voice of prayer had before been 
heard, but this multiplication of the family neces- 
sitated some more formal establishment of the di- 
vine service. Cain, on the other hand, whose object 
was to defend himself from being " a fugitive in 
the earth," built the first city, and called it after 
the name of his first-born son : 3 and the two races 
continue to run parallel to one another. In the 
time of Lamech, the seventh from Adam, the 
powers of human society came to a head — his 
children were leaders in their several ways to the 
herdsmen and artificers of the world : " Adah bare 
Jabal : he was father of such as dwell in tents, and 
have cattle. And his brother's name was Jubal : 
he was the father of all such as handle the harp 
and organ. And Zillah, she also bare Tubal- cain, 
an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron." 4 
These gifts were in fact but manifestations of 
that sovereign wisdom from which human skill, as 
well as human conscience, proceeds ; the confused 
remains of that divine image which had formerly 
been perfectly manifest. This image was never so 
far effaced as not to shew the traces of what it once 
had been. Thus the perfection of human skill was 
shewn in Bezaleel to be God's inspiration. 5 And 
even man's society had its sanction and strength 
from the wisdom of God. By it " kings reign, and 
princes decree justice." 6 But that the worldly seed 
should be allowed to work out and develope these 
gifts of God, — that it should bring society to its 

2 Gen. iv 26. 3 Ver. 17. * Ver. 20-22. 

* Ex. xxxi. 3. « Prov. viii. 15. 



B.C. 3017. LAMECH ENOCH. 5 

strength, should build cities, and provide the arts 
which defend and adorn them, — is a proof that there 
is a certain maturity of man's social state, which is 
to be brought about through human agency. This 
Lamech beheld in the labours of his children, and 
to it probably he referred when he compared the 
security of himself, the seventh from Adam, with 
that of the first founder of city-life. He had heard 
of God's sentence on Cain ; but he derided it, when 
he thought of the strength and ingenuity of his 
family, and of the safety which society conferred. 
" If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, surely Lamech 
seventy and sevenfold." 7 

Far different was the confidence which, in the 
same generation, was displayed by the descendant 
of Seth. The dispositions of men already indicated 
that the advancement of civil society would be 
attended by a neglect of its real end. But in this 
very generation did God raise up a testimony to 
the reality of His moral government, and to the 
vanity of all attempts at improvement in which He 
was forgotten. " Enoch, the seventh from Adam, 
prophesied concerning these, saying, Behold, the 
Lord cometh with ten thousand of His saints, to 
execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that 
are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds 
which they have ungodly committed, and of all their 
hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken 
against Him." 8 " And Enoch walked with God: 
and he was not; for God took him." 9 

Thus early were the principles of human soci- 
ety and the hallowed rule of heavenly communion 
brought into opposition with one another. Both 
arise from those natural relations with which God 
has formed mankind, and from those powers and 

7 Gen. iv. 24. 8 Jude 14, 15. 9 Gen. v. 24. 

B 2 



6 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.u. 3017. 

endowments which He has given. But they speedily 
took their leave of one another. Yet the happiness 
of man's life depends upon their moving together 
with an equal pace ; and the complete establishment 
of Christ's kingdom implies their perfect combina- 
tion. And the great object of history is to shew 
how these powers diverged from one another, and 
how they have again been brought to unite : their 
times of meeting are the grand epochs in the annals 
of mankind. 

Before the flood these powers of the world and 
the Church were altogether divided. In one family 
God was worshipped ; and Adam's life of nine hun- 
dred and thirty-one years enabled him to testify 
God's works to eight generations of his children. 
Methuselah, his descendant in the eighth genera- 
tion, lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years, so 
that he could talk with Noah his grandson, and 
with the children of Noah, and tell them what the 
first man had declared to him. But out of this 
household God was forgotten : " All flesh had cor- 
rupted his way upon the earth." 10 Even the worldly 
purposes of human society were destroyed. It did 
not yield present security. " The earth was cor- 
rupt before God, and the earth was filled with vio- 
lence. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh 
is come before Me ; for the earth is filled with vio- 
lence through them; and, behold, I will destroy 
them with the earth. But Noah found grace in the 
eyes of the Lord." " 

10 Gen. vi. 12. u Gen. vi. 11, 13. 8. 




Jupiter Fluvius, or the god of rain, according to the ancients, from the Column of 
Antoninus. His army was delivered, when surrounded by the Quadri,by a wonder- 
ful rain, which was attributed by the heathen to the intervention of their gods, but 
by the Church to the prayers of his Christian soldiers. 



CHAPTER II. 

W&t ©art!) f eopktJ. 

NIMROD BABEL. 

B.C. 2348. a.m. 1656. 

The breath of Heaven has blown away 

What toiling earth had pil'd, 
Scattering wise heart and crafty hand, 
As breezes strew on ocean's sand 

The fabrics of a child. Christian Year. 

The flood is the first great epoch in history ; for by 
it God destroyed the worldly race, and the chosen 
family became the representatives of mankind. God 
saved them " in the ark from perishing by water," 
while He brought in " the flood upon the world 
of the ungodly;" 1 just as "the ark of Christ's 
Church" 2 has since been appointed as the only 
sure means of preservation. This flood, and the 
means of man's deliverance from it, were long re- 
membered among the different tribes of mankind ; 
and an ancient historian tells us, that in his days' 
there were " some remains of the ark to be seen 
among the mountains of Armenia, and that the 
pitch procured from it was employed as a charm." 3 
For when the waters subsided, it was in this coun-^ 
try, in the heart of Asia, that the ark rested on the 
mountains of Ararat. Noah and his three sons, 
Shem, Ham, and Japheth, together with their wives, 

1 2 Pet. ii. 5. 2 Baptismal Service. 

3 Berosus, ap. Joseph, i. 4. 



B.C. 23+8. NOAH S PROPHECY. 9 

and the animals which they had kept alive in the 
ark, issued forth to occupy the empty world. 

For some time Noah's family lived together; 
and before they separated, a prediction was uttered 
by the aged patriarch, which has been wonderfully 
accomplished in the general arrangement of the 
world. Taking occasion from the want of rever- 
ence shewn to him by Ham, and from the filial 
duty of Shem and Japheth, Noah declared what 
would be the general fortune of their future de- 
scendants. To the children of Shem he promised 
that they should be the especial objects of some 
spiritual blessing, while Japheth's descendants should 
bear the leading part in the appropriation of this 
world's possessions. To Ham he gave no promise ; 
and one of Ham's sons, who perhaps had taken 
part in his father's crime, he sentenced to be a 
servant to the children of his brother : " Blessed 
be the Lord God of Shem, and Canaan shall be his 
servant." 4 Finally, he foretold a combination be- 
tween the worldly power of the sons of Japheth 
and the spiritual seed of Shem ; and this consumma- 
tion he predicted when those who possessed earthly 
might should take up their rest with the heirs of the 
divine blessing. " God shall enlarge Japheth, and 
he shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan 
shall be his servant." 5 

The general fulfilment of this prophecy will be 
seen in the subsequent history. * So early did God 
mark out what should be the general aspect of the 
world. But the first appearance of things promised 
otherwise. Nimrod, the first who rose to worldly 
eminence, was Ham's descendant, and with his fol- 
lowers the empire of the East for a while continued. 
Ham's other descendants, independently of Canaan, 
extended themselves over the continent of Africa, 
« Gen ix. 26. 6 Ver 27 



10 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 2247. 

while the children of Shem continued in the neigh- 
bourhood of Armenia, and thence spread towards 
Syria and Arabia. The family of Japheth was 
more widely diffused ; and, stretching towards the 
northern part of Asia, extended to India on one 
side, and Europe on the other. From which son 
of Noah the early inhabitants of America came is 
uncertain. Our knowledge concerning the rest is 
chiefly drawn from the likeness which there is in 
the languages now spoken by different nations. 
Thus we are assured, that we who live in Europe 
are akin to the inhabitants of India, because the 
Indian languages resemble those of the Teutonic, or 
German family; while the Arabians, who lie between 
us, must be referred to a different son of Noah, be- 
cause their language is totally distinct from that of 
either race. 6 

This difference of tongues was not first pro- 
duced, though it has since been increased, by the 
distance of different nations. But about five gene- 
rations after the flood, proud men — the leaders, 
probably, of the chief families of Noah's sons — 
wished to build them a great city, that they might 
not be divided from one another. All the world, 
they thought, would thus be gathered into one 
empire, and men would not be scattered without 
connexion over the earth. This great design has 
since been set forth, and will one day be fulfilled 
in Christ's Church ; but the kingdom desired by 

6 " No philologer could examine them [i. e. Sanscrit, 
Greek, or Latin] without believing them to have sprung from 
some common source, which perhaps no longer exists. There 
is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing 
that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a 
very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit" 
(Sir W. Jones's Third Discourse). " The Arabs sprung from 
a stock entirely different from that of the Hindoos" (Idem, 
Fourth Discourse). 



B.C. 2247. NIMROD. 11 

men was founded in pride, and ended in ruin. By 
God's law, authority belonged to Noah, that just 
man whom God had favoured ; whereas this new city 
was the beginning of Nimrod's kingdom. 7 Noah 
would have used his authority as a parent to keep 
his children from idolatry; and, perhaps, for this 
reason God continued his life for three hundred 
and fifty years after the flood. But nothing good 
could be expected from Nimrod, that " mighty 
hunter," whose power was from strength, not from 
right, and who was the grandson of Ham, the least 
godly of those who had escaped the flood. God 
was pleased, therefore, to defeat this plan for mak- 
ing the earth one kingdom. He confounded men's 
languages, so that they could not understand each 
other's speech. They were obliged, therefore, to 
separate into different nations. " Therefore is the 
name of" the city " called Babel," i. e. confusion, 
"because the Lord did there confound the language 
of all the earth." 8 

1 Gen. x. 9 ; 1 Chron. i. 10. 8 Gen. xi. Q. 




the Triumphal Arch of Arcadius at Constantinople. 



CHAPTER III. 

%ty gtessgrfan, or $ix%\ ©nat iEmpfrr. 

NIMROD — SEMIRAMIS — SARDANAPALTJS. 

Here Nineveh, of length within her wall 

Several days' journey, built by Ninus old, 

Of that first golden monarchy the seat. Milton. 

We have seen how God defeated the attempt to 
establish by worldly means an universal empire. 
That plan was postponed till the confusion of 
tongues was remedied by as signal a miracle as 



B.C. 2000. SEMIRAMIS. 13 

had occasioned it, and till the time came for the 
establishment of the kingdom of God here below. 
Yet the final consummation was thus early pro- 
vided for in the arrangements of society, and the 
order of man's public estate was made a framework 
which should minister to the purpose of the Most 
High. With this view the theatre of this world was 
filled up by four great empires, which prepared the 
way for Christ's kingdom. Of these, the first was 
the Assyrian monarchy. Before it was ended, God 
revealed its fortunes, and those of the three later 
ones, to His prophet Daniel; and by this means 
we know that they were the temporal precursors of 
Christ's kingdom, and that they will not be followed 
by any other worldly monarchy of like importance 
But of this hereafter. 

The first great empire was founded by Nimrod, 
and its original seat was at Babel, 01 Babylon. 
This we may suppose to have been about two thou- 
sand two hundred years before our Lord's coming, 
and one hundred and fifty years after the flood. 
From Babylon " he went out" to the conquest of 
Asshur, a son of Shem, " and builded Nineveh." J 
From the name of those they conquered, his fol- 
lowers, were called Assyrians. Men's lives were 
still so long, that it is probable Nimrod was their 
leader for nearly two hundred years ; and he was 
worshipped by them after his death under the title 
of Belus, or Bel. The next prince of whom we 
read was Ninus, whom pagan historians suppose to 
have lived about two thousand years before Christ. 
Under him Nineveh became "that great city," 2 of 
which we are told that its walls were three days' 
journey in circuit. It was the capital of the East, 
which by this time was well peopled. Its more dis- 

1 Gen. x. 11. ' Jonah iii. 2. 



14 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B «C 2000. 

tant countries, India, Bactria, and Egypt, had been 
settled at the time of the birth of Peleg, Shem's 
great grandson, and Peleg was lately dead, having 
lived two hundred and thirty-nine years. 3 Now, 
therefore, we hear of military expeditions. Ninus 
conquered Bactria, one of the first places in which 
the wealth of the world was concentrated, and in 
that early age the chief channel of communication 
with India. He was succeeded by his queen, Se- 
miramis, to whom Babylon owed its earliest deco- 
rations. She was not more distinguished for her 
splendour than for her warlike enterprises ; but 
she was defeated in an attempted invasion of India, 
chiefly by means of the elephants, which abounded 
in that country, and which they used in war. To 
match them Semiramis made figures " to imitate 
the shape of an elephant ; every figure had a man 
to guide and a camel to carry it. But these mock- 
elephants stood the shock of the real ones but a 
little while ; for the Indian beasts, being exceed- 
ingly vast and stout, easily bore down all that op- 
posed them." 4 The queen, who had crossed the 
river Indus on a bridge of boats, could scarcely 
escape herself, with about one-third of her men. 

From this time the river Indus was the bound- 
ary of this great empire towards the south, while it 
possessed such part of the rest of Asia as was well 
peopled. And in this state it lasted for about 
twelve hundred and sixty years. Of its transac- 
tions in the interval we know little or nothing. 
Yet the long existence of this vast empire connects 
the first attempt of worldly ambition with those 
great events which God was afterwards about to 
exhibit among mankind. We see more clearly the 
several stages of the world's history — four vain at- 

3 Gen. x. 25. 4 Diod. ii. 1. 



SARDANAPALUS. 15 

tempts on the part of man at binding together all 
nations, and then the winding up of the mighty his- 
tory in the kingdom of the Son of God. 

After the Assyrian empire had existed in all 
about fourteen hundred and fifty years, it was 
broken into two kingdoms, which lasted about two 
hundred years longer. This took place at the death 
of Sardanapalus. His father Pul, and the people 
of Nineveh, had repented at Jonah's teaching; 5 but 
the whole people soon sunk back into sensuality 
and sin. Sardanapalus himself " exceeded all his 
predecessors in sloth and luxury, and led a most 
effeminate life, wallowing in pleasure and wanton 
dalliance." fi Two of his subjects, Arbaces general 
of the Median soldiers, and Belesis governor of 
Babylon, having found means to enter the palace, 
where he had shut himself up among women and 
eunuchs, were so indignant at his degeneracy, that 
they rebelled against him. Sardanapalus at first 
opposed them with great vigour ; but the Medes, a 
more warlike people than the Assyrians, finally de- 
feated his army and besieged him in Nineveh. Its 
fortifications, however, were so strong, and it was 
so well supplied with provisions, that he might still 
have defied his enemies, had not a sudden inunda- 
tion of the river Tigris destroyed a large portion 
of the city-wall. When Sardanapalus saw that his 
kingdom was lost, and Nineveh his great city taken, 
he caused a huge pile of wood to be made in his 
palace-court, heaped upon it his gold, silver, and 

5 b.c. 747. Great uncertainty attaches to the chronology 
of this part of history. The date here given is that assigned in 
Prideaux's Connexion. The chronology commonly adopted in 
this work, up to the time of our Lord, is that of Blair ; after- 
wards that of Burton, in his Lectures on Ecclesiastical History, 
is generally followed. 

6 Diod. ii. 2. 



16 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 747. 

royal apparel, and gathered his wives and the cor- 
rupt courtiers who had shared his excesses into the 
midst. Then he set fire to the pile, and burnt him- 
self and them together. So miserable an end had a 
life of sin. 



CHAPTER IV. 

%%t ©all of &fcraf)am. 

Great grace that old man to him given had, 
For God he often saw from heaven's height. 

Spenceb. 

About the time when the first worldly empire came 
to its strength under Semiramis, it pleased God, 
with whom a thousand years are as one day, to 
make gradual and silent preparation in another 
manner for that kingdom in which the nations of 
this world were finally to be united. This was done 
by the call of Abraham. Abraham was the chief 
of one of the eldest tribes of Shem's children ; and 
though even among them the worship of idols had 
begun to appear, 1 yet the God of Noah was re- 
membered in this family, 2 which had remained at 
Ur in Chaldea, near man's first dwelling-place, and 
which probably had long been influenced by the 
neighbourhood of Noah himself. From this coun- 
try, now become the seat of the Babylonian empire, 
Abraham was called to depart. 3 " The Lord had 
said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and 
from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto 
a land that I will shew thee : and I will make of 
thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make 
thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing ; and 
I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that 
1 Josh. xxiv. 2. 2 Gen. xxxi. 53. 3 B.C. 1921 



18 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

curseth thee : and in thy seed shall all the nations 
of the earth be blessed." 4 

This promise is the great charter of the Church. 
When Adam lost Paradise, God had promised him, 
that of the woman's seed should come a deliverer 
for the human race. 5 And now the hope was to 
gain shape and substance, by being embodied in 
those lasting institutions which have their comple- 
tion in the Church. The promise makes mention, 
first, of an earthly inheritance, and then of a hea- 
venly possession ; first of a temporal seed, and then 
of a spiritual progeny ; first of that which should 
be confined to one nation, and then of that in 
which all the world should be included. Yet were 
these several parts of the promise so united, that 
the one was borne, as it were, in the arms of the 
other. Before their completion they seemed but 
one; and since their completion they have been 
again so blended together, that whatsoever was 
spoken of the outward has reference also to the in- 
ward blessing. For God's dispensations have been 
ever thus ; what is present and temporal has taken 
its shape from some more lasting blessing which lay 
hid within. As the indistinct imaginations of child- 
hood express the weakness of man's knowledge in 
this present state, 6 and as the ark was a token of 
the Church, in which men are in like manner offered 
a refuge from destruction, 7 so was God's dealing 
with the temporal seed of Abraham a type, that is, 
an acted prophecy^ of what befalls his spiritual de- 
scendants. Thus does the whole promise of Abra- 
ham belong to the Church of Christ. For it was 
limited from the first to one of the nations of which 
Abraham was the natural parent — namely, to that 
nation of Israel, of which, now that men are elected 

4 Gen. xii. 1-3. * Gen. iii. 15. 

6 1 Cor. xiii. 11, 12. M Pet iii. 20, 21. 



CALL OF ABRAHAM. 19 

not by birth, but by baptism, 8 the Church of Christ 
has inherited the privileges and the name/ J " The 
promise," says St. Paul, " was not made to seeds, as 
of many ; but as of one, And to thy seed," the Church 
of Christ; 10 that the blessing of Abraham might 
come on the Gentile Church. 11 

The promise, then, that it should be " the heir 
of the world," 12 and that it should redress the mise- 
ries which sin had introduced, was thus early given 
to the Church of God ; and for her sake, and for 
the fulfilment of God's blessing, have the long line 
of her patriarchs, saints, and martyrs contended. 
Of these Abraham was among the greatest. He 
left his native land, and went out, not knowing 
whither he went. " By faith he sojourned in the 
land of promise, as in a strange country 1 , dwelling 
in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with 
him of the same promise : for he looked for a city 
which hath foundations, whose builder and maker 
is God." 13 Here he afforded a memorable instance 
of domestic piety, setting up an altar to his God in 
every place of his temporary abode. And to reward 
his faith he had an especial vision of his great De- 
scendant, whose coming it was the privilege of the 
latter days to witness. But Abraham " desired to 
see that, day, and he saw it, and was glad." 

8 Rom. ix. 24. 9 Gal. iii. 16. 10 Ibid. 

11 Gal. iii. 14. Vide Hammond in loco. Tholuck's Alte 
Test, in Neuen. 

« Rom. iv. 13. « Heb. xi.9-11. 




EGYPTIAN BEICKMAKERS 



CHAPTER V. 

^t'stors of @gs>pt. 

0B1GIN OF ITS INHABITANTS — SKSOSTRIS — PYRAMIDS 

NECHO. 

I must dwell longer upon Egypt, because it contains more that is re- 
markable, and more objects worthy of attention, than any other 
country. With a peculiar climate, and a river resembling no other 
in the world, the Egyptians have also laws and customs quite con- 
trary to those of any other mortals.— Herodotus, ii. 35. 

The Assyrian empire had little to fear from the 
worldly might of Abraham; although, in defence 
of his nephew Lot, he once defeated its prince, as 
though in token of the ultimate superiority of his 
children. It was different with the kingdom of 
Egypt, which for many centuries threatened to di- 
vide with it the command of the East, and was not 
finally conquered till the time of the Persians. Nor 
is this the only thing which renders the history of 
Egypt interesting. Painting, statuary, architecture, 
the art of medicine, and of what is called statistics 
— the art, that is, by which the inhabitants and the 



1, 2, Making bricks with a wooden mould. 
3, 4, 5, Digging, miiing, and carrying the clay or mud. 



EGYPT. 21 

wealth of states is calculated — had their origin in 
that country. 1 The fables which passed from an- 
cient Egypt into Greece have exercised great influ- 
ence on literature. Thus we still retain in our lan- 
guage the word phenix ; a name derived from the 
early legend, that every five hundred years the bird 
so called came to the temple of the Sun at Egyptian 
Thebes, that there a spontaneous fire consumed it, 
and that out of its ashes arose another bird to in- 
herit its name and nature. 2 Further, Egypt was 
for many years the nursery of the Israelitish race. 
During the infancy of that people, God was pleased 
to let them grow up under the shelter of Egyptian 
civilisation, till they were numerous enough to be 
planted as a separate nation among the families of 
the earth. On all these accounts the history of 
Egypt requires a place in any connected view of 
the progress of mankind. For it is not merely the 
extent of any country which makes it important, 
nor yet the number of its inhabitants ; but that it 
should have been chosen by God to be an important 
link in that mighty chain, by which He has bound 
together the first origin of men and their final 
destiny. 

That Egypt was one of the first countries set- 
tled after the flood, we gather from its being some- 
times called the land " of Ham," 3 and from its re- 
taining in its native dialect a name derived from 
Ham's son, Misraim. This early settlement, before 
the tribes of men were widely separated, was the 
reason, probably, why the Egyptians had so much 
in common with the Indians, who are not supposed 
to have been the children of Ham. Among both, 
for example, prevailed what were called castes ; that 
is to say, a man might not pass from one rank or 
class to another, but children were obliged to follow 
1 Herod, ii. 177. 8 Id. ii. 73. 8 Ps. lxxviii. 51. 



22 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

the occupation of their parents. The ancient Egyp- 
tian language 4 also was, in some curious particulars, 
a common link between that which was spoken by 
the descendants of Shem and Japheth. No doubt 
men must have been attracted to the country by the 
extreme fertility which is derived from the river 
Nile. The annual inundation of that river in the 
summer months, in consequence of the rains in 
Nubia near its source, supplies Egypt, where it 
scarcely ever rains, with water. The lower and 
more fertile part of the country, called from its 
shape the Delta (the Greek name of the letter A), is 
perfectly flat, and the villages are built on embank- 
ments, which during the inundation are left as 
islands amid the waves. Parts which the river can- 
not reach require to be watered artificially : hence 
Egypt is said to be " watered by the foot ;" 5 that 
is, by water raised by foot-pumps, 6 whence the 
unusual alarm created by those storms with which 
Moses was ordered to afflict it. 7 Besides the fer- 
tility which it occasioned, the inundation of the 
river encouraged the growth of science in Egypt, 
because geometry, or a knowledge of the properties 
of figures, was required for dividing the land which 
the waters had covered. 8 

At an early period of their history, the Egyp- 
tians were enslaved by a foreign tribe, probably 
either the Assyrians, or some people from the same 
quarter, who, from their occupation, were called 
Hycsos, or shepherds. 9 This must have happened 
soon after the time of Abraham; for when his 

4 Thus, in the Semitic languages the pronoun he is the 
copula ; in the Japhetic the verb substantive is. But in the 
Coptic the pronoun and verb substantive are employed indis- 
criminately. 

5 Deut. xi. 10. 

6 Or perhaps merely by men's labour. 

" Ex. x. 24. 8 Herod, ii. 109. 9 Jos. in Apion. i. 



SESOSTJRIS. 23 

grandson Jacob was compelled by famine to remove 
from Canaan into Egypt, 10 great prejudice was felt 
against the occupation of his family : " Every shep- 
herd" was "an abomination to the Egyptians."" 
The shepherd-kings, therefore, had been driven out, 
but were still remembered. When Jacob's family 
first settled in Egypt, it was in number but seventy 
persons ; but after remaining two hundred and six- 
teen years in that country, it had increased into a 
vast multitude. 19 ' At that time there rose up a king 
of a new family, who was ignorant of the services 
which had been rendered to Egypt by Joseph. This 
new Pharaoh, — so the kings of Egypt were called, 
from a word which signifies the sun, 13 — was guilty 
of those great cruelties towards Israel which God 
punished by the infliction of ten plagues. 14 At first 
he subjected them to excessive labour in preparing 
bricks for his treasure-cities and other public build- 
ings ; and more ancient bricks have been found to 
bear his mark than that of any other king of Egypt. 15 
But as this did not check their increase, he put 
their children to death, until God was pleased by a 
stretched-out arm to bring them up out of the house 
of bondage. Though this for a time weakened the 
Egyptians, yet they recovered their strength ; and 
being more skilful than their neighbours in the arts 
of war as well as those of peace, they continued to 
rule over the adjoining nations. 

During the time that the Israelites were governed 
by judges, the celebrated king Sesostris marched as 
far as into Asia Minor, set up columns there in 
memory of his victories, and founded a colony at 
Colchis. 16 Out of pride he made the captive kings 
whom he had conquered draw his chariot. 

10 b.c. 1706. u Gen. xlvi. 34. 12 Ibid 27. 

13 Wilkinson's Ancient Egypt, ch. ii. l4 b.c. 1491. 

15 Ibid. ch. ii. 99. 16 Herod, ii. 102. 



24 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

This was hardly a greater mark of ostentation 
than was shewn by other Egyptian kings, who reared 
as their monuments those great pyramids, which 
continue to this day. The principal pyramids are 
three in number ; the largest, which is attributed 
by Herodotus to Cheops, is four hundred and sixty- 
one feet in height (about a third higher than St. 
Paul's), while its base, a square of seven hundred 
and forty-six feet, is as large as the area of Lin- 
coln's-Inn Fields. Herodotus tells us that one hun- 
dred thousand men were engaged for twenty years 
in its erection. 17 The next in size were built by the 
successors of Cheops — his brother Chephris, and 
Mycerinus his son. Small chambers are found in 
the very centre of these buildings, accessible by nar- 
row passages, which were designed apparently for 
the burial-places of their founders. 

It was the common custom of the Egyptians to 
preserve the bodies of their dead in figured cloths ; of 
which vast numbers, as well as of the pictures which 
adorned their tombs, are still to be seen. The pic- 
tures form a sort of writing, which from their being 
employed to describe sacred subjects, are called 
hieroglyphics. In them we see many things which 
are mentioned in the Old Testament ; God having 
been pleased that the country where His people 
sojourned should be the longest remembered. We 
see the custom of embalming the dead, as was done 
with Jacob ; and we find a separate class of men 
employed as physicians, as is mentioned in the book 
of Genesis. The worship of the golden calf is seen 
to be an imitation of what the Israelites had wit- 
nessed in Egypt. These and similar things are 
perpetuated by Egyptian monuments. 

Though this country, commanding the entrance 
of the Nile, the largest river in the old world, and 
V Herod, ii. 124. 



PHARA0H-NECH0. 25 

adjoining both the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, 
was well adapted for purposes of commerce, yet, 
owing to the exclusive disposition of its inhabitants, 
it was little known by the Greeks till the reign of 
Psammetichus. 18 He owed his throne to the assist- 
ance of Grecian mercenaries, to whom in return he 
gave a settlement in Egypt. His son Necho, a war- 
like prince, extended the Egyptian power in Asia, 
and captured Jerusalem, after defeating king Jo- 
siah. 19 Herodotus calls it Cadytis, or the holy city, 
and describes it as nearly of the size of Sardis. 20 

Necho, however, was compelled to yield to the 
arms of the Assyrians, and to confine himself to his 
own continent. 21 Here he had been engaged in 
constructing a canal which was to unite the river 
Nile to the Red Sea; an enterprise in which one 
hundred and twenty thousand persons are said to 
have perished. 22 But he left his purpose incom- 
plete ; probably because, on his defeat by the Assy- 
rians, he feared to facilitate their passage into Egypt. 
He continued, however, to direct his attention to 
the navigation of the Red Sea ; and from the mea- 
sures which he employed for discovering the south 
of Africa, he appears to have formed designs of 
extending his power in that direction. For it was 
by his orders that some Phoenician mariners sailed 
down the Red Sea, with a view of discovering whe- 
ther a passage could be found by it to the Straits 
of Gibraltar. 23 The course which they held was 
one in which the winds were likely to favour them ; 
and we are told that in three years they passed 
round Africa, landing every winter, and setting 
forth again at the approach of spring. A circum- 
stance is added, which, to the ancients, unacquainted 

ls Herod, xi. 152. b.c. 660. 19 Herod, ii. 159. b.c. 608. 
20 Herod, iii. 5. 21 Jer. xlvi. 2. b.c. 604. 

w Herod, ii. 158. 23 Herod, iv. 42. 

D 



26 



THE FIVE EMPIRES. 



with the southern hemisphere, threw doubt upon 
their testimony, but which is in reality the strongest 
confirmation of the truth of their narrative. They 
stated, as a singular phenomenon, what must, neces- 
sarily happen to the south of the line, that, as they 
sailed round Africa, the sun at midday appeared to 
the north, and not to the south of them. 




Cattle during an Inundation in the Delta. 



CHAPTER VI. 

&ij? ISxo&us of Bratrl. 

IfeRAEl/S TYPICAL CHARACTER THE LAW — PREPARATION 

FOR CHRIST'S CHURCH. 

Ye too, who tend Christ's wildering flock, 
Well may ye linger round the rock 

That once was Zion's hill ; 
To watch the fire upon the mount, 
Still blazing like the solar fount, 

Yet unconsuming still. Christian Year. 

The Israelites had dwelt two hundred and sixteen 
years in Egypt, and four hundred and twenty years 
had passed since Abraham had received the promise 
of the land of Canaan, when God called them to its 
possession. 1 They had at first grown into a great 
nation under the shelter of the Egyptian govern- 
ment ; but the oppression which that government 
had now begun to exercise made them receive gladly 
the summons to depart. Moses led them forth, — 
a man preserved in childhood by God's providential 
care, afterwards instructed by God Himself in the 
wilderness, and finally sent back to perform by 
divine power what, in the presumption of youth, he 
had expected to accomplish by human means. 

As God delivered His people by miracle from 
Egypt, so, by like miracle, did He preserve them in 
the wilderness. Forty years they remained there ; 
they received new laws, they formed new habits, till 
they were ready to come forth as a separate people 
i b.c. 1491. 



28 THE *1VE EMPIRES. B.C. 1491. 

into the country which they were to possess. This 
wonderful change of the common laws of God's 
providence was not ordained for their sakes alone. 
" These things happened unto them for ensamples; 
and they are written for our admonition, upon whom 
the ends of the world are come." 2 In His deal- 
ings with Israel it pleased God to give a sign of 
His dispensations with the Church at large. Israel 
was led through the waters of the Red Sea ; so has 
God appointed that through the waters of baptism 
men pass into His Church. 3 As by this ordinance 
men are admitted into " the number of God's faith- 
ful and elect children," 4 so was the nation of Israel 
" elected" to be a " special people." 5 Thus was 
their general predestination a sign of the election 
of individuals in later days to Christian privileges. 
So, again, the manna with which they were fed in 
the wilderness was a type of that heavenly food with 
which, in His holy communion, our Lord refreshes 
His faithful servants. 6 The wilderness, in which 
they walked so long, resembled the world we in 
habit ; and the heavenly state was signified by the 
Canaan of rest which lay beyond. 7 

These things were understood not at the moment, 
but were " pearls that lay concealed in the great 
deep of God's counsels." 8 And when the Israelites 
entered Canaan, the old figures passed away like 
visions of the night, and a new series of God's deal- 
ings began. But before this happened, that won- 
derful law had been given, the schoolmaster to 
bring men to Christ, which lasted till it was ful- 
filled in Him. This law had several parts and many 
objects. Its first part consisted of those ten com- 
mandments which Moses distinguishes from the rest, 

2 1 Cor. x. 11. 3 1 Cor. x. 1. 4 Baptismal Service. 
8 Deut. vii. 6. 6 John vi. 51 ; 1 Cor. x. 3, 16. 
7 Heb. iv. 8. 8 Davison on Sacrifice. 



H.C. 1491. OBJECTS OF THE LAW. 29 

because spoken by the very mouth of God, 9 by 
which the teaching of man's conscience, and the 
commands which had been given to the patriarchs, 
were renewed. Another part consisted of those 
laws and ceremonies which were meant to keep the 
Israelites distinct from surrounding nations. Thus 
were they fitted for their great purpose, to prepare 
the way for the coming of Christ. The provision 
for this object was the third and most important 
part of their law, which by its sacrifices led their 
minds to that great and only real sacrifice for sin, 
to be offered once for all on the cross. The sacrifice 
of a lamb, at the season of the passover, was the 
clearest type of the sacrifice of that Lamb of God, 
who at the self-same season shed His blood for our 
deliverance. But this was a type which could not 
be understood till it shone in the light of its own 
fulfilment. Other things there were which could 
earlier be perceived. The law which appointed 
means for atoning for every outward defilement, 
provided no method by which the defilement of sin 
could be done away. Yet conscience taught that 
the murderer needed forgiveness more than the man 
who touched the dead, and that evil thoughts de- 
filed the soul more than outward stains the body. 
Thus by. what it left undone, as well as by what it 
did, the law taught men to expect a Saviour. 

At this time, also, our Lord's coming was de- 
clared by clearer prophecies. Balaam, the pagan 
seer, who was summoned by the king of Moab to 
curse Israel, spoke of the " Star" which should rise 
" out of Jacob." 10 This prophecy was remembered 
by other Eastern nations also ; but to God's people, 
their own leader, Moses, declared, " a prophet shall 
the Lord your God raise up unto you of your bre- 

9 Dent. v. 22. "' Num. xxiv. 17. 



30 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 1491. 

thren, like unto me." 11 And truly, till the Hope 
of all nations came in the flesh, " there arose not a 
prophet like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face 
to face." 12 The miraculous preservation of his bodily 
frame was a sign of that unwonted measure of spi- 
ritual strength with which it pleased God to favour 
him. " Moses was one hundred and twenty years 
old when he died : his eye was not dim, nor his 
natural force abated." 13 But what still more dis- 
tinguished him was his willingness to sacrifice his 
life for the rebellious people whom he led. "If 
Thou wilt," he prayed to God, " forgive their sin ; 
and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book, 
which Thou hast written." 14 In this respect, as well 
as in his character of priest and lawgiver, he was 
a type of that divine Being, who truly gave up His 
life not merely as a friend on behalf, but also as a 
sacrifice instead of men. 15 Thus early was prepara- 
tion made for the establishment of a spiritual king- 
dom; and while the civil societies of men were opening 
its way by the advancement of order and intercourse, 
God had already fixed its roots in the bosom of a 
religious community. Here was already afforded a 
miniature of the achievements of later times, — the 
great deeds of the Son of God foreacted in dumb 
show in the ordinances of God's worship and in the 
history of His people. As the games of childhood 
foreshadow the serious actions of after-life, so were 
those sublime transactions, which were afterwards 
to be performed on the world's highest theatre, not 
only foretold in the words, but also foredone in the 
types of prophecy. 

11 Deut. xviii. 15. l2 Deut. xxxiv. 10. 

13 Deut. xxxiv. 7. M Exod. xxxii. 32. 

1(5 Matt. xx. 28. 




Tyre, from a drawing 



the spot by A. W., Esq. 



CHAPTER VII. 

5srael: tts .gfitijges, ^ropfjets, anti Itings. 

SAMSON — SAMUEL SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHETS SOLOMON- 
COMMERCE OF TYRE — PETRA EDOM PORTS ON THE RED 

SEA BALBEC AND TADMOR TEMPLE SOLOMON'S SINS 

AND PUNISHMENT. 



Why sleeps the future, as a snake enroll'd 
Coil within coil at noontide 1 



Wordsworth. 



When the Israelites had been forty years in the 
wilderness, they advanced under Joshua, the suc- 
cessor of Moses, against the nations of Canaan. 1 
These people, the most corrupt of the children of 
Noah, had, in consequence, been sentenced by God 
to total destruction. 2 In Abraham's time " their 
iniquity was not yet full," 3 though Sodom and Go- 
morrah were, even in that day, visited by a super- 



1 b.c. 1451. 



Gen. ix. 25. 



3 Deut. ix. 4; Gen. xv. 16; Gen. xviii. 20. 



82 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 1161. 

natural ruin. But now the time of their punish- 
ment was come, and the Israelites were ordered to 
inflict it. As the executioners of God's sentence, 
Israel was required to destroy those nations from 
under heaven. This was, in a measure, effected 
during the time of Joshua. The land was divided 
among the twelve tribes; and during the space of 
three hundred and fifty years they lived in it with- 
out temporal king, without settled government, dis- 
tinct from all other people ; at times oppressed by 
their neighbours, as a punishment for their neglect 
of God's law, and then again- restored by one or 
another deliverer upon their repentance. Mean- 
while the public worship of their nation was at 
Shiloh, in the land of Ephraim, where the ark and 
the tabernacle of the congregation had been placed 
by Joshua. 

The last of the judges who were raised up for 
the deliverance of Israel was Samson, 4 a man in 
whom it pleased God to set forth with peculiar 
clearness what had been in a measure exhibited in 
many previous leaders — how the mere earthly gifts 
of strength and valour rnav minister to His service. 
By using the arm of a self-willed and self-indulgent 
man for effecting the ends which by an irreversible 
decree He had ordained of old, the Almighty seemed 
to assert His rule over all the ordinary endowments 
of humanity. Nor was this lesson confined to the 
Israelites. By their intercourse with other nations, 
the fame of Samson was spread throughout the 
ancient world ; his achievements as the deliverer 
of the chosen people mingled with the feeling that 
some gifted champion was needed to redress the 
violence under which mankind in general were 
suffering ; and under the name of Hercules, as 

B.C. 1161. 



B.C. 1176. SAMSON SAMUEL. 33 

St. Augustin assures us, 5 the deeds of the son of 
Manoah were remembered. In the Tyrian Her- 
cules 6 — for the Greeks could trace him to the 
East — we see the miraculous birth of Samson, his 
conquest over the lion, his ruin by female arts, and 
the circumstances of his death recorded. 

During the long interval in which the judges 
ruled, there seems to have been no progress towards 
those great events which formed the design of Israel's 
history. Yet it was obvious that the purpose of 
the law had not yet been attained ; and all might 
understand that one part at least of Abraham's pro- 
mise, which extended to all nations of the earth, 
had not been accomplished. At the end of this 
time begins a new period in the history of Israel ; 
a succession of prophets who uttered fresh predic- 
tions, and of princes who gave fresh examples, of 
Messiah's kingdom. This period 7 was introduced 
by Samuel the prophet. He came in a new cha- 
racter, to revive what had been lost, and to prepare 
for what was coming. His commission was shewn 
by predictions, of which the fulfilment was so mani- 
fest and immediate, that " all Israel, from Dan to 
Beersheba, knew that Samuel was established to be 
a prophet of the Lord." 8 

His ancestor, Korah, 9 had perished miserably, 
for presuming, without authority, to exercise that 
priestly office which belonged to the family of 
Aaron. But Samuel had authority to supersede 
the usual ministers. For " no man taketh this 
honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, 
as was Aaron." 10 And the ordinary ministers of 
God give place at all times to those who, by their 
miracles, can shew an extraordinary commission. 

5 De Civltate Dei, xviii. 19. 

6 Bochart's Peleg, p. 610. 7 b.c. 1176. 
fi 1 Sam. iii. 20. » 1 Chron. vi. 10 Heb. v. 4. 



34 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 1120. 

But not only did Samuel exercise the ordinary- 
offices of the priesthood, — he laid the foundation of 
institutions by which the future condition of Israel 
was greatly amended. He found the people, as the 
last chapters of the book of Judges teach us, in its 
domestic habits and its daily life little raised above 
the surrounding heathen. How was this to be 
remedied ? Some permanent means of instruction 
was needed; something which might create a better 
standard of feeling and practice, and might gra- 
dually imbue the whole population with those prin- 
ciples which are contained in the law of God. For 
this purpose he established the colleges of the sons 
of the prophets. He began with two places — one, 
the hill of God near Bethel ; u the other, Naioth in 
Ramah, near his own residence, 12 and there col- 
lected a band of youths, whom he trained for God's 
service. The object of these institutions was not 
merely the instruction of the young. In them, as 
in the cathedrals of our own land, the solemn ser- 
vice of God was continually maintained ; music 
and singing were employed to impress the minds 
of a thoughtless generation ; and thus two places 
at least in the land displayed in its perfection that 
devotional character which belonged especially to 
the situation of God's chosen people. 

These measures were calculated to produce great 
effect upon the character of Israel, and doubtless 
led the way to that increased measure of God's 
worship which distinguished the days of David. 
Samuel's own grandson was the first of those " whom 
David set over the service of song in the house of 
the Lord, after that the ark had rest." 13 Such col- 
leges of the prophets lasted and increased during 
the days of the monarchy. To this institution like- 

11 1 Sam. x 6. 12 1 Sam. xix. 20. 

13 1 Chron. vi. 31 33. 



B.C. 1015. SOLOMON. 35 

wise Samuel, though unwillingly, led the way ; and 
at the desire of the people, not contented by the 
Almighty's immediate government, he was instructed 
to appoint a king. He first anointed Saul, and 
then David, to the royal office. And in David, 
who was wonderfully brought without his own seek- 
ing to the kingdom, and still more in Solomon, his 
son, the course of God's providence was further dis- 
covered. 14 For not only did the greatness, strength, 
and splendour of Solomon realise that promise of 
worldly power which was made to Abraham, but it 
afforded a figure of that spiritual kingdom which 
the future seed of David was to establish. Solomon 
also was endowed by God with a wisdom which 
was far more valuable than any earthly greatness. 
" He was wiser than all men ; than Ethan the Ezra- 
hite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons 
of Mahol : and his fame was in all nations round 
about." 15 Solomon's wisdom is remembered because 
it is preserved in the record of God's holy Scrip- 
ture; but how short-lived is human fame, seeing 
that men, in their day the wisest in the East, but 
for this verse would be altogether forgotten ! 

Solomon's wealth and power was much increased 
by the aid of several flourishing cities which had 
arisen upon the coasts of his kingdom. We read, 
in the book of Judges, that a portion of the na- 
tions of Canaan was left " to prove Israel, whether 
they would hearken unto the commandments of the 
Lord." 16 The chief which are mentioned are the 
Philistines, who occupied their south-western, and 
the Sidonians, who lived upon their north-western, 
boundary. These tribes were known among the 
Greeks by the general title of Phoenicians. The 
Philistines had already tried Israel by war ; and 

14 b.c. 1015. 15 1 Kings iv. 31. w Judg. iii. 4. 



36 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 1015. 

David had been raised up as the great deliverei 
who finally prevailed over their assaults. Hence- 
forth the Sidonians were to tempt them by the arts 
of peace ; and their evil example had a great share 
in effecting Israel's downfal. 

The Sidonians were, indeed, at times at war 
with Israel ; and, as was their custom whenever 
they could seize captives, they " sold the children 
of Israel and the children of Jerusalem unto the 
Grecians ;" 17 but in general peace existed between 
them, — a thing the more necessary to the Sidonians, 
because, as in after-years, " their country was nou- 
rished by" the land of Israel. 18 For already " Judah, 
and the land of Israel,, traded in their market wheat 
of Minnith, and honey, and oil, and balm." 19 This 
friendly connexion was strengthened by the tie of 
a common language. Though the Sidonians were 
children of Ham, yet their country, one of the 
earliest peopled in the world, (" Hebron was built 
seven years before Zoan in the land of Egypt," 20 ) 
was no doubt inhabited before the confusion of 
tongues ; and either from this circumstance, or from 
subsequent intercourse, their language was the same 
with that of their Jewish neighbours. 21 

Thus undisturbed on the side of the continent, 
the Phoenicians had built several powerful cities 
upon peninsulas or small islands adjoining to the 
northern shore of the land of Israel. The most 
northerly of these, Aradus, was considerably beyond 
their boundary : it stood upon an island ; and oppo- 
site to it was another town on the continent, called 
from its position Antaradus. The next towards 

17 Joel iii. 6 ; Amos i. 9. ,8 Acts xii. 20. 

19 Ezek. xxvii. 1 7. 20 Num. xiii. 22. 

21 To give a single instance : in Carthage, a Tyrian colony, 
the ruling officers were called suffetes; evidently the same word 
with the Jewish nar»» of the judges, shophetim. 



B C. 1015. TYKE. 37 

the south was Tripolis, which still exists. Then 
came Byblus, or Berytus, now Beyroot. South- 
ward of Berytus lay Sidon, the first of these Phoe- 
nician cities which stood properly upon Israelitish 
ground. But southward still, within the limits of 
the tribe of Asher, lay Tyre, the last and chiefest 
of all their cities, a Sidonian colony, as ancient as 
the time of Joshua ; 22 originally built upon a penin- 
sula, but afterwards transferred to an island about 
half a mile from the shore; and so small (only 
twenty-two furlongs in circumference), 23 that its 
inhabitants were compelled to raise their houses 
to an unusual height. 

These five cities, but especially the last two, 
had attained in the days of Solomon to an unparal- 
leled greatness; engrossing all the trade which at 
that time existed in the world. There was then no 
nation which possessed any power except the As- 
syrians and Egyptians, with both of whom the 
Phoenicians carried on a gainful traffic. 24 But their 
greatest power was derived from the colonies settled 
by them on the various barbarian coasts which 
their ships visited. They had penetrated into the 
Black Sea, where they had founded the city of 
Bithynium : of " Tubal and Meshech," the Tiba- 
rem and Moschi, who inhabited Georgia, they 
purchased the "persons of men;" while Togar- 
mah, or Cappadocia, "traded in their fairs with 
mules and horses." 25 The inhabitants of Greece 
and Italy were a people destined, in their time, 
to play a higher part in the world's history; and 

22 Josephus supposes it to have been founded during the 
times of the Judges ; but the account given by Herodotus 
(ii. 44) accords with the book of Joshua (xix. 29). 

23 Pliny, v. 17. Strabo, xvi. 757. 
54 Herodotus, i. 1. 

25 Ezek. xxvii. 13, 14. Bochart, Peleg, iii. 11, 12. 



38 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 1015. 

there the Phoenicians were unable to make any 
permanent settlements, though some of their emi- 
grants mingled with the Greeks, and they carried 
off from its coast a few prisoners; but along the 
other shores of the Mediterranean they spread 
without opposition. Their most important colonies 
were on the northern coast of Africa — Utica, Car- 
thage, Adrumetum ; but they are said also to have 
settled on the western margin of Africa, along the 
shore of the Atlantic, and to have gone northward 
as far as Britain and the Baltic. 26 They occupied, 
likewise, the Islands of the Mediterranean, Cyprus 
or Chittim, Sicily, and the Balearic Isles. These 
stations they had taken with a view to their trade 
with the most important of all their subject coun- 
tries, Tarshish, or Tartessus, the country at the 
mouth of the Guadalquiver in Spain. Spain was 
at that time rich in minerals ; " by reason of the 
multitude of all kinds of riches, with silver, iron, 
tin, and lead, she traded in the fairs" of Tyre. 27 
Strabo mentions that in the south of Spain there 
were two hundred places of Phoenician origin ; and 
the people of the country were subjected by them 
to the same oppression, in searching for the pre- 
cious metals, to which they themselves afterwards 
subjected the Indians of America. " Flow freely 
through thy land, like the Nile, O daughter oi 
Tarshish," 28 the prophet exclaims on the destruc- 
tion of Tyre ; " for no bond restrains thee any 
more." 29 

Such was the traffic of the Phoenicians with the 
West ; and they were now united in the closest al- 
liance with the kingdom of Solomon, which afforded 

26 Heeren, Ideen, i. § 2, p. 53. 2 ' Ezek. xxvii. 12. 

28 From tiie size of the vessels required for this voyage, the 
Jews called large ships " a navy of Tarshish," 1 Kings x. 22. 

29 Is. xxiii. 10, according to Gesenius s translation. 



B.C. 1015. TIKENICIAN COMMERCE. 39 

equal advantages for what was of no less import- 
ance — their trade with the East. Their cities were 
the great marts for spices and gold from the south 
of Arabia ; and for ebony, ivory, and cotton, from 
the nearer part of India. This trade had hitherto 
been carried on principally by caravans with Haran, 
Canna, Aden, and Saba, 30 places at the south-west 
of Arabia, which still retain the same names. An- 
other mode of communication was with the town 
of Gerra, near the Persian Gulf. Here the Phoeni- 
cians had a colony in the small island of Dedan, 
a name given by Ezekiel to two places — one a 
town in the north of Arabia, 31 which supplied the 
Tyrians with wool by the produce of its flocks; 
the other a mart where the wealth of India was col- 
lected. 32 " The men of Dedan were thy merchants ; 
many isles were the merchandise of thine hand : 
they brought thee for presents horns of ivory and 
ebony." 33 The caravans from this quarter came 
directly across the peninsula of Arabia; and the 
disturbances in that country are described, there- 
fore, as impeding them in their course : " In the 
wilds of Arabia do ye lodge, ye caravans of Dedan. 
The inhal itants of the land of Teman [in the central 
part of Aiabia] bring water to him that is thirsty, 
they come with bread to meet the fugitive. For 
they fly from the sword." 34 The importance of the 
town of Fetra in Edom, of which great remains still 
exist, was derived from its being the depot of their 
traffic. 1 1 occupies a hollow pass in a valley, sur- 
rounded by inaccessible rocks ; and in it, as Diodo- 
rus 35 assures us, the Arabians used to hold a com- 
mon mart of their merchandise. From Petra the 

30 Ez. xxvii. 23 ; and Heeren, i. § 2, p. 102. 

31 Ez. xxvii. 20. 32 Rochart, Peleg, iv. 6. 
33 Ez. xxvii. 15. 34 Is. xxi. 13-15. 

35 Book xix. 6. 



40 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

merchandise of the East was carried to what He- 
rodotus calls " the Arabian marts," 36 in the neigh- 
bourhood of Gaza, and thus was conveyed bv sea 
to Tyre. 

But the conquests of Solomon opened a new and 
better channel for their commerce. By reducing 
Edom, and establishing his authority through the 
country to the north of the Red Sea, he was able 
to open the harbours of Eloth and Ezion Geber to 
Phoenician enterprise. The united fleets of Solo- 
mon and of Hiram, king of Tyre, visited Ophir, a 
name given to the shores of the southern ocean 
beyond the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. The coast- 
ing voyage down the Red Sea was then so difficult, 
that a year was spent by these vessels in their pro- 
gress and return, and an intervening year in the 
collection of their cargo. 37 

Solomon likewise facilitated the commerce of 
the Tyrians by building two " store-cities," 38 Baal- 
ath or Balbec, and " Tadmor," or Palmyra, " in 
the wilderness." 39 Palmyra especially, upon an 
oasis in the great desert between Tyre and Baby- 
lon, three days' journey from the Euphrates, was 
of much service to the caravans which passed to 
that place, the great central emporium of the East. 
By thus contributing to the traffic of Tyre, Solo- 
mon shared in its wealth ; so that he " made sil- 
ver to be in Jerusalem as stones, and cedars made 
he to be as sycamore-trees that are in the vale 
for abundance." 40 And certainly he turned his 
wealth to the noblest purpose to which human 
riches can be made subservient. He made his con- 
nexion with the Phoenician cities the means of rear- 
ing that majestic temple for God's service, which 

36 Herodotus, Hi. 6. 3 ? 1 Kings x. 22. 

** Heeren, i. § 2, p. 125. 5y 1 Kings ix. 18. 

40 1 Kin-s x. 27. 



b.c. 1015. Solomon's temple. 41 

had been designed by David his father, but which 
was not to be built save by a man of peace. He 
perceived that the true end of human greatness was 
to consecrate of his best to this purpose. " The 
house that is to be builded," David had said, " must 
be very magnifical, of fame and of glory throughout 
all countries;" 41 "for the palace is not for man, but 
for the Lord God." " But who am I, and what is 
my people, that we should be able to offer so will- 
ingly after this sort ? for all things come of Thee, 
and of Thine own have we given Thee." 42 

In this spirit did Solomon raise a fixed habita- 
tion for God's service. 

The Tabernacle of the congregation, a tent which 
Moses had been ordered to set up in the wilderness, 
had been the place in which God's glory had hither- 
to been displayed. It had two chambers — an outer 
and an inner, or most holy place. In this last the 
ark was placed, and over it was the mercy, eat, 
where God vouchsafed to manifest His presence in 
a cloud and flame. As it is the privilege of the 
Christian Church that our Lord is more especially 
present in its appointed congregations, so was it the 
glory of Israel that in its place of national worship 
God appeared. But in the time of Samuel the ark 
had been removed from Shiloh ; and after being re- 
stored by the Philistines, who had taken it captive, 
it had been kept in various places till David brought 
it to Mount Sion. There Solomon finally placed it, 
in the most holy place of his temple, which became 
from that time the centre of Israel's worship. 

But though Solomon employed his wealth for so 
noble a purpose, yet his great riches, and his con- 
nexion with the surrounding heathen, led, even in 
his time, to a baneful result. " His wives turned 

41 1 Chron, sxii. 5. 42 1 Chron. xxix. 1, 14-. 

E 2 



42 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

away his heart," and " he went after Ashtoreth, the 
goddess of the Zidonians." 43 It seemed as though 
the perfect development of human society could not 
safely blend with the Church of God till the races 
of men had gone through their course, and the sons 
of Japheth should have taken up their final dwelling 
in the tents of Shem. Meanwhile this union with 
the sons of Ham, though natural, and though conse- 
crated to higher purposes, was not without its evil. 
And since prosperity and peace could not remain 
when innocence had departed, therefore civil com- 
motion and discontent overcast, like a dark cloud, 
the evening of the life of Solomon. 

So incomplete were those preparatory fulfilments 
of prophecy which led the way for its complete ac- 
complishment in the Church of Christ. In Solomon 
one part of the promise to Abraham seems for a 
time to be satisfied ; yet is his glory diminished 
before his death, as though to prove that the king- 
dom of Israel is not yet completely manifested. 
David has the assurance of eternal dominion ; yet 
the kingdom of peace is not to be looked for in 
his days. Moses, the lawgiver, may not enter the 
land of promise. Only in the Son of God do these 
separate characters find their complete perfection. 
For " the likeness of the promised Mediator is con- 
spicuous throughout the sacred volume as in a pic- 
ture, moving along the line of the history in one or 
other of His destined offices ; the dispenser of bless- 
ings in Joseph — the inspired interpreter of truth 
in Moses — the conqueror in Joshua — the active 
preacher in Samuel — the suffering combatant in 
David — and in Solomon the triumphant and glo- 
rious king." 44 

41 1 Kings xi. 5. 

44 Newman's History of the Avians, i. § 3. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Isvarl an& §uijafi. 

JSROBOAM NEW MODE OF WORSHIP AHAB ELIJAH- 
CAPTIVITY OF ISRAEL ELECTION PASSES TO JUDAH. 

B.C. 975. 

rhose things which are here set down, abridged from the sacred 
TOlumes, are not presented to the reader that he may neglect the 
source from which they come, hut rather that his familiar know- 
ledge of the Scripture may enable him to recognise what here he 
reads; for from the fountain-head alone can be drawn the full 
mysteries of divine truth.— Sulpicius Sevekus i. I 1. 

On the death of Solomon the kingdom of Israel was 
divided. That such should be the case had been 
predicted by God as a punishment for Solomon's 
sins; it was brought about by the folly of Reho- 
boam, Solomon's son, and by the turbulence of the 
people. Two tribes only, Judah and Benjamin, 
remained subject to Rehoboam ; the other ten made 
Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, their king. Now, since 
the blessing of Abraham had been expressly confined 
to the line of David's seed, and his descendants were 
to be kings for ever, this separation from his family 
was not only a rebellion against their natural prince, 
but also an abandonment of that religious hope which 
was the heritage of their nation. This was felt by 
Jeroboam, who, fearing lest the blessings and hopes 
of the temple- worship should carry back his people 
to their former sovereign, resolved to alter the old 
religion. He began by depriving the priests and 
Levites of the office, which they had by inheritance, 
of being God's ministers, and setting up in Ui ir 



44 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C 975. 

room priests of his own. 1 They had exercised their 
office by succession from the time of Aaron ; but 
Jeroboam " made priests of the lowest of the people, 
which were not of the sons of Levi." 2 How could 
such men's sacrifices be accepted, any more than 
those of Dathan and Abiram in the wilderness? 
They were destitute of the only circumstance which 
could give authority to any new line of ministers — 
such power of working miracles as proved them to 
have received a commission from God. This was 
not needed by the Jewish priests, because they 
inherited that authority from Aaron, which had at 
first been approved by supernatural tokens. Yet it 
pleased God to give a sign of the futility of Jero- 
boam's plans, and to accompany it by a lesson which 
indicated their danger. A prophet was sent from 
Judah, and at his word Jeroboam's altar was rent, 
its ashes poured out, and his own hand subsequently 
withered. 3 This prophet had received God's direct 
injunction not to eat or drink in Jeroboam's do- 
minions, nor to return by the way by which he 
went. He listened, however, to the words of another 
pretended prophet, who professed to have a mes- 
sage from God by which his own was superseded. 
Though himself guided by an inspiration which God 
had avouched by miracle, he rested and ate, trusting 
to the assurances of a person who gave no such sign 
of the reality of his mission. For such irreverence 
God was pleased to sentence him to death : " a lion 
met him and slew him." And in his history Jero- 
boam might see a reflection of his own impiety, in 
substituting a line of priests by his own authority, 
for those, the origin of whose succession had been 
sanctioned by the supernatural power of God. 

With a new set of priests Jeroboam set up a 

1 2 Chron. xi, 13, 2 1 Kings xii. 31. 3 1 Kings xiii. 



b.c. 'J75. Jeroboam's sin. 45 

new mode of worship. The people had been wont, 
according to God's command, to go up three times 
a year to worship at Jerusalem. But Jeroboam set 
up two golden calves at the two ends of his king- 
dom, at Bethel and Dan, and persuaded the people 
to regard them as signs of the Being whom they 
had been wont to serve : " Behold thy gods, O 
Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of 
Egypt." 4 Thus did he corrupt God's worship for 
the sake of preserving his power ; but he did so to 
his own injury. Even after God had warned him 
by a prophet, " he returned not from his evil way, 
but made again of the lowest of the people priests of 
the high places ; whoever would, he consecrated him, 
and he became one of the priests of the high places. 
And this thing became sin unto the house of Jero- 
boam, even to cut it off, and to destroy it from off 
the face of the earth." 

After Jeroboam and his son, various kings ruled 
over the ten tribes ; but they continued to worship 
those calves which had been designed to draw men 
from God's temple at Jerusalem. At length, about 
fifty years after Jeroboam's time, Ahab introduced 
the worship of Baal from the neighbouring city of 
Sidon.. This he did at the persuasion of his wife 
Jezebel, the daughter of the king of Sidon ; and so 
besotted was she by this idol-worship, that she sought 
to slay all the prophets or teachers of the true reli- 
gion who remained in the land of Israel. But at 
this time God raised up Elijah the Tishbite to be a 
restorer of His service, and gave him such courage, 
power, ard influence, that he became the founder of 
a new line of prophets in Israel, and prevented the 
true faith from being totally lost. He began by 
prayiig for a great drought, which God sent ir. 

4 1 Kings xii. 28. 



46 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 918. 

answer to his prayers. 5 It was a painful thing to 
witness the want and misery which this drought 
occasioned throughout the whole country ; but better 
it was that they should suffer this affliction than that 
God's favour should be for ever lost to the nation. 6 
At a later period God sent down fire from heaven 
upon the altar which Elijah had built upon Mount 
Carmel ; and the whole nation, which was looking 
on, confessed, " The Lord, He is the God ; the Lord, 
He is the God." 7 Thus commissioned, Elijah put 
to death the priests of Baal, according to the law of 
Moses; he predicted Ahab's own destruction and 
that of his family, and the Lord " let none of his 
words fall to the ground." He, too, was a type of 
Christ in his afflictions, as in his spirit and power of 
John the Baptist; 8 and as Moses had done before 
him, he fasted forty days in the wilderness, where 
his great Master was to undergo the like trial. 9 By 
Elijah, and Elisha who came after him, schools of 
the sons of the prophets were set up or strengthened, 
which served to maintain some measure of piety in 
the land. Yet all things went back, as might have 
been expected when the promise of Abraham was 
despised ; so that at length the nation of Israel was 
carried captive into the land of Assyria, never to be 
reinstated. " For so it was, that the children of 
Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, which 
had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, and 
had feared other gods, and walked in the statutes of 
the heathen. And the children of Israel did secretly 
those things that were not right against the Lord 
their God, and they built them high places in all 
their cities, from the tower of the watchman to the 
fenced city. And they set them up images and 

5 James v. 17. 6 1 Kings xviii. 17. 

7 1 Kings xviii. 39. 8 Luke i. 17 ; 1 Kings xix. 8. 

9 2 Kinss vi. 1. 



B.C. 721. CAPTIVITY OF ISRAEL. 47 

groves in every high hill, and under every green 
tree. And there they burnt incense in all the high 
places, as did the heathen whom the Lord carried 
away before them; and wrought wicked things to 
provoke the Lord to anger. For they served idols, 
whereof the Lord had said unto them, Ye shall not 
do this thing. Yet the Lord testified against Israel, 
and against Judah. by all the prophets, and by all 
the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and 
keep My commandments and My statutes. Notwith- 
standing they would not hear, but hardened their 
necks, like to the neck of their fathers, that did not 
believe in the Lord their God. And they left all 
the commandments of the Lord their God, and made 
them molten images, even two calves, and made a 
grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and 
served Baal. And they caused their sons and their 
daughters to pass through the fire, and used divina- 
tion and enchantments, and sold themselves to do 
evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to 
anger. Therefore the Lord was very angry with 
Israel, and removed them out of His sight; there 
was none lei't but the tribe of Judah only. And the 
Lord rejected all the seed of Israel, and afflicted 
them, and delivered them into the hand of the 
spoilers, until He had cast them out of His sight. 
So was Israel carried out of their own land into 
Assyria unto this day." 10 

Meanwhile the kingdom of Judah was prosperous 
when it served God, and afflicted when it forsook 
Him. Yet as its kings continued to be that line of 
David to which God's ancient promise was secured, 
and as the public worship of the temple and ordi- 
nances of the law were not interrupted, the nation 
still remained God's people, though its many sins 

10 2 Kings xvii. 7, &c. 



48 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B C. 721. 

brought heavy punishments. When it walked in the 
statutes of Israel, it shared for the time in Israal's 
punishment. But the public actions of the nation 
depended much upon its prince ; and though some 
of the kings of Judah, as Ahaziah and Ahaz, were 
wicked, some were good, as Asa, Jehoshaphat, and 
Hezekiah. This last was on the throne of Judah 
when the ten tribes were finally cast off, and carried 
captive into Assyria. And then it was that God 
declared, by His prophet Hosea, that His election, 
which had fallen on Isaac, one of the sons of Abra- 
ham, and on Jacob, instead of his brother Esau, 
should move henceforth in the line of the Jewish 
nation. " Ephraim compasseth Me about with lies, 
and the house of Israel with deceit; but Judah yet 
ruleth with God, and is faithful with the saints." 11 

11 Hosea xi. 12. 



CHAPTER IX. 

&ssrman Umpire restorer. 

HEZEKIAH-—ISAIAH — PROPHETS CHALDEES BABYLON ITS 

COMMERCE AND SPLENDOUR CAPTIVITY OF JUDAH TYKE 

APRIES — PROPHECY OF THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

B.C. 747. 

Prophecy is but Divine history, which hath that prerogative over 
human, as the narration may be before the fact. 

Lord Bacon. 

After the death of Sardanapalus the Assyrian em- 
pire was divided for a time into two parts, one of 
which had Babylon for its capital, and the other 
Nineveh. By this last, which had the easier com- 
munication with Canaan, the ten tribes were carried 
into captivity. Ten years later, 1 Sennacherib, who 
had succeeded Shalmanezer, came up against Judah. 
At this time the kingdom of Babvlon was little 
dreaded, for the wide desert seemed to be an effec- 
tual barrier between it and Jerusalem. And there- 
fore, when its king sent messengers to congratulate 
Hezekiah on his recovery from sickness, he told the 
prophet Isaiah that they came " from a far country, 
even from Babylon." 2 But this distant and friendly 
kingdom was declared by God to be appointed for 
th? final punishment of the Jewish people, while 

' bc. 721. 
2 Isaiah xxxix. G. 
F 



50 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 710. 

from their more threatening enemies of Nineveh 
thev were miraculously delivered. When Sennache- 
rib was already encamped against Jerusalem, "the 
angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in the camp 
of the Assyrians a hundred and four score and five 
thousand." 3 The promise of present preservation, 
and the assurance that the nation most dreaded was 
not appointed to injure them, gave peace and tran- 
quillity during the remnant of Hezekiah's days ; and 
at this time 4 God bestowed upon His people a still 
further blessing in those predictions of the final 
glories of Christ's kingdom, which form the last half 
of Isaiah's prophecy. The first half of this book 
refers, for the most part, to God's judgments on the 
Jews and the surrounding nations ; the last part of 
it, to their deliverance from captivity, and to the 
coming of the Saviour, which lay beyond. And 
these predictions it pleased God to give in a tranquil 
period of His Church's history, as though their cha- 
racter of thanksgiving and confidence was to agree 
with the peaceful and prosperous state of the period 
when they were given. Their very style and lan- 
guage is calm, easy, and flowing, and differs much 
from the abrupt and passionate sentences in which 
God's judgments upon His sinful people are pre- 
dicted. 

It was not until four generations after Hezekiah, 
that Isaiah's predictions concerning Babylon were 
accomplished. Manasseh, Hezekiah's son, had es- 
pecially provoked God's wrath against His people, 
by filling Jerusalem with the innocent blood of His 
servants. 5 No national sin so much excited God's 
anger as this persecution of His Church. In it 
Isaiah is supposed to have perished, — sawn asunder 
by Manasseh's order. 6 This was the age of the chief 

3 Isaiah xxxviL 36. 4 B.C. 710. 

5 2 Kiugs xxiv. 4. 6 Heb. xi. 37. 



B.C. 604. THE CHALDEES. 51 

prophets. Jeremiah's predictions were uttered in the 
time of Josiah, Manasseh's grandson, and of Josiah's 
sons. In the latter part of this time, Ezekiel pro- 
phesied in Chaldea, and Daniel in Babylon. Hosea 
and Micah had lived in the days of Hezekiah ; Amos 
shortly before, Thus was the Jewish Church pre- 
pared for that great judgment winch was shortly 
to fall upon it. The captivity, — delayed for a 
time in consequence of Jonah's reformation, — came 
shortly afterwards, in the days of Zt-dekiah, Josiah's 
son. 

Babylon had now attained that dangerous great- 
ness which Isaiah had predicted, when the ambas- 
sadors of its king Merodach Baladan had visited 
Hezekiah. The independence of Babylon had at that 
time been short; for when Merodach Baladan had 
reigned for half a year, Sennacherib conquered him, 
and established his son Esarhaddon upon the throne. 
But in the interval which had since elapsed a new 
power had grown up in Asia. 7 The Chaldseans, a 
people of Japhetic race, 8 whose native land was the 
mountainous region to the north of Assyria, where 
they were still found in the time of Cyrus, 9 whether 
introduced as mercenaries by their less hardy neigh- 
bours, or by whatever means they were settled in 
the neighbourhood of Babylon, had now become its 
masters. " This people was not," says the prophet," 

7 Vide the Armenian edition of Eusebius's Chronicon, in 
Gesenius on Is. xxxix. 1. 

8 Gesenius, ubi sup. p. 748. The writer has been censured 
for quoting Gesenius's Commentary, without cautioning his 
readers against the sophistical and heartless neology which 
pervades it. As that work, however, is not translated, he 
thought it little likely to be read except by professed students ; 
and to such persons the best antidote to this specious and in- 
creasing evil of the times is to be found, not in ignorance of its 
novelties, but in an acquaintance with those ancient principles 
of the Anglican Church, which supply its sole correction. 

9 Cyrop. iii. 2, § 7, 12. 10 Is. xxiii. 13. 



52 THE FIVE EMPIRES. n.C. 604. 

" till the Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in 
the wilderness." But " when the Assyrian power 
was beginning to sink, the Chaldeeans in Babylon 
united themselves to other tribes which were pre- 
paring to revolt, and, under the guidance of their 
conquering chief Nebuchadnezzar, played the part 
of their former lords." 11 Babylon, therefore, was 
the great seat of their strength, " the beauty of the 
Chaldees' excellency ;" 12 and it was especially under 
"Nebuchadnezzar the Chaldean" 13 that it became 
" the glory of kingdoms," " the golden city." 14 

How it came to this measure of greatness, and 
what was the peculiar feature which led Daniel after- 
wards to describe it as a " head of gold," shall now 
be mentioned. Till the improvements in naviga- 
tion opened a passage to the East Indies by the 
Cape of Good Hope, the Persian Gulf was the great 
channel through which all traffic from the East 
flowed into the western world. It has been men- 
tioned that the merchants of Dedanim carried their 
wares across Arabia to Tyre. But Babylon lay in 
the most favourable position to engross this traffic ; 
ships could sail to her up the Euphrates from the 
Indian Sea ; and hence, at an early period, she had 
become the centre of trade in that part of the East. 
To this day Bagdad and the adjoining cities upon 
the Euphrates present a singular contrast in wealth 
and manners to the wild mountains of Persia on the 
south-east of them. " Though but a shadow of what 
it was, Bagdad is still the caravansera of Asia." 15 
And in ancient times Bab) Ion was " a land of traffic, 
a city of merchants." 16 Hence Isaiah speaks of 

11 Gesenius on Is. xxiii. 13, p. 747. 

12 Is. xiii. 19. 13 Ezra v. 12. 

14 Is. xiv. 4. 

15 Porter ; quoted by Heeren, Ideen, i. § 2, p. 20u, 

16 Ezek. xvii. 4. 



B.C. G04. COMMERCE OI< BABYLON. 53 

" the Chaldseans, whose cry is in the ships ;" and 
iEschylus tells of "the mingled crowd sent forth 
by the wealthy Babylon, archers and managers of 
vessels." 17 

Herodotus, an eye-witness of the magnificence 
of Babylon, gives us some account of the trade with 
which its river supplied it. He speaks especially of 
that with Armenia and Mesopotamia, whence vast 
quantities of the necessaries of life were brought in 
large coracles, some of them five thousand talents in 
burden, formed of ribs of wood overlaid with a 
covering of hides. 18 When these vessels arrived at 
Babylon their frameworks were broken up and soli!. 
while the hides were carried home upon the back of 
an ass, which was brought down in the vessel. 

In this manner the city was supported. But its 
wealth was derived from vessels which came to it 
immediately from the sea, or landed their cargoes at 
Gerra, its colony on the Persian Gulf. 19 This traffic 
had probably diminished in the time of Herodotus, 
since it was discouraged by the Persian conquerors 
of Babylon. But it was thus that the Babylonians 
were supplied with cotton, which they wove into 
those garments of which we hear as early as the 
days of Joshua. 20 From the Persian Gulf, also, 
they" received pearls, bamboos, and gems, which 
they were celebrated for their skill in cutting. 21 
Cinnamon they imported from the Isle of Ceylon — 
" the sweet cane," which came, as Jeremiah tells 
us, " from a far country." 112 

But besides this seafaring activity, which had 

17 Persse, 52. 

18 Herod, i. 194. 

19 Heeren, i. § 2, p. 232. 

sc Josh. vii. 21 ; Herod, i. 195. 

21 Heeren, i. § 2, p. 216 ; and Herod, i. 196. 

* Jer. vi. 20. 

F 2 



54 THE FIVE EMPIRES. b C, 604. 

its common effect in corrupting their manners, and 
bringing them, as Herodotus assures us, 23 to an un- 
usual measure of immodesty, Babylon was likewise 
the great depot for trade with the further part of 
India, with which the ancients communicated by 
land. Thus from that portion of India, which was 
afterwards part of the Persian empire, near the 
sources of the Indus, they received cochineal. 24 
There was considerable traffic with Lesser Thibet, 
along a road which, passing from Assyria through 
the Caspian Straits, a celebrated pass near the south 
of the Caspian Sea, afterwards led on to Bactria 
and Aria. These countries bordered on the tribes 
which are called by Herodotus the northern Indians, 
of whom he speaks as supplying vast quantities of 
gold-dust, which they procured from ant-hills in the 
great desert of Kobi. 25 His account evidently shews 
that great riches were procured from that quarter; 
and also that those from whom he derived his in- 
formation were unwilling to reveal the method in 
which it was procured. But Ctesias tells us, that 
when the Indians went on the expeditions in which 
they procured gold, it was in large bodies ; and 
that their journey lasted for three or four years. 26 
So that we seem to discover that the trade by which 
Babylon was enriched was carried on through the 
medium of caravans with the most distant parts of 
the East. 

At the time of its great prosperity, and either 
by Nebuchadnezzar or his queen, Babylon was 
adorned with public works of the most gigantic 
kind. The city was built in a vast square on each 
side of the river Euphrates ; its whole circuit being 

23 Herod, i. 199. 

21 Ctesias, in Heeren, Ideen, i. 2, p. 214. 

a5 Herod, vii. 102. 

26 Ctesias, in Heeren, Ideen, i. 2, p. 21° 



B.C. G04. CHALDjEAN conquests. 55 

fifty-four miles. 2 y Each front was thirteen and a 
half miles in length ; its walls were nearly three 
hundred and fifty feet high ; its sti'eets were parallel 
to one another ; and it had one hundred brazen 
gates. Brazen gates, likewise, and a flanking wall, 
secured each division of the city from the river. 
They were joined by a wooden bridge, 28 which was 
removed at night, and was supported by a stone 
pier in the midst of the river. In the centre of 
the eastern division stood the palace ; the temple 
of Bel.is on the western side was the magnificent 
tower, consisting of eight stages raised one upon 
another, 29 which gave name to the place. The 
ruins of this pile remain — a confused mass of earth 
and masonry — and are still called by the wandering 
Arabs Birs Ninirod, or Nimrod's Tower. 30 On the 
other side of the river, in the neighbourhood of the 
palace, was a work almost as remarkable, — a gar- 
den formed of immense terraces, supported upon solid 
masonry ; a work which Nebuchadnezzar is said to 
have reared for his queen, who, " being a native of 
the hilly country of Media, was accustomed to such 
a prospect." 31 

Such was the internal appearance of a city which 
was at this time raided up to be the head of the 
East. After uniting all the ancient p nver of the 
Assyrian e npire, Nebuchadnezzar defeat d Pharaoh- 
Necho at Circesium 32 (on the Euphrates ), and drove 
the Egyptians altogether out of Asia. The power 
of the Egyptians, the only rivals of Assyria, being 
thus broken, he overspread the East with his armies. 
He shut up the Tyrians within their walls, and be- 

» Herod i. 179-181. 

* Herod i l.°6. 

w Herod i. IS J. 

*• Heeren, Ideen, i § 2, p. 170. 

*■ J >s°phus contra Apion, i. 

3* Jer. xlvi 2. E c. oUi. 



56 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 671. 

sieged them for thirteen years. 33 At this time they 
appear to have removed to the island, 34 which hence 
became Tyre ; for when attacked by Alexander, at 
a later period, we read of no attempt to defend their 
ancient fortifications. After the capture or destruc- 
tion of old Tyre, Nebuchadnezzar marched into 
Egypt. A pries, or Pharaoh-Hophra, the grandson 
of Necho, 3 " who then was king, had hitherto been 
successful in his enterprises ; and such was his con- 
fidence, that he had been wont to boast that " the 
gods themselves could not deprive him of his power." 36 
His pride had provoked the anger of Jehovah, who 
declared by the mouth of Ezekiel, " Behold, I am 
against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon 
that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath 
said, My river is mine own, and 1 have made it for 
myself." 37 Nebuchadnezzar was chosen to execute 
God's sentence : 3S he speedily overran and plundered 
Egypt, 39 and inflicted upon it a blow from which it 
did not shortly recover. 40 

By this conquering prince the sins of God's own 
people were to be punished. He was led against 
them shortly after his accession to the throne : he 
burnt the city 41 and the glorious temple which Solo- 
mon had built; and, according to the common policy 

33 Josephus contra Apion, i. 

34 It is stated, on the one hand, that Nebuchadnezzar should 
not have the spoil of Tyre (Ez. xxix. 18) ; yet, on the other, 
that he should destroy its walls (Ez. xxvi. 10). 

35 Vide p. 25. 36 Herod, ii. lot). 
3 ? Ez. xxix. 3. 

38 Herodotus takes no notice of this conquest of Egypt ; 
but it is mentioned by Josephus (Antiquities, x. 11), who 
cites Megasthenes : and Herodotus appears to have received 
his intelligence solely from the Egyptians themselves ; for he 
mentions Necho's victory over the Jews, but not his defeat at 
Carchemish, which is necessary to explain his retreat. 

39 b.c. 571. 40 Ez. xxix. 13. 

41 b.c. 587. 



B.C. 587. THE CHURCH AND THE WOULD. . r >7 

at that period of removing conquered nations, with 
a view of breaking up the associations which con- 
nected them with their former state, he carried 
the people captive to Babylon. Thus was fulfilled 
Isaiah's prophecy, and thus was the Church punished 
by being subjected for a season to that worldly em- 
pire over which it was finally to prevail. 

The first, therefore, of the four monarchies had 
now reached its height. Its capital, Babylon, was 
the greatest as well as most ancienl city in the world. 
The most civilised and best-peopled portions of the 
earth were subject to it. The heirs of that divine 
promise, which has bound together the most distant 
parts of the world, w r ere swallowed up for a time in 
its greatness. But just at this season, He who has 
given bounds to the great deep w r as pleased to de- 
clare what should be the limits to man's ambition, 
and where its proud waves should be stayed. At 
the very moment when the first empire had reached 
its greatness, and when it touched upon that humble 
polity of Israel, which its breath seemed enough to 
sweep away, God declared the vanity of earthly 
greatness, and the eternal endurance of His people. 

The prophecy of the latter days was given when 
the spiritual and temporal seed came thus in contact 
with • one another. The concurrence of both was 
needed to give expression to God's decree, as the 
union of both was needed to fulfil it. It seemed, 
therefore, as if another of those great epochs were 
at hand, when the history of mankind was to be 
gathered into a single channel. But the union was 
only for a season. It was not given to the possessors 
of Nimrod's corrupt kingdom, even though it had 
fallen into the hands of the more vigorous Chal- 
dasans, to combine permanently with the heirs of 
promise, and thus to produce between them those 
great events which were to consummate the fortunes 



58 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

of the world. The office of this first monaichy was 
but to lead the way ; to indicate what should fol- 
low. Yet, in order to shew how it ministered to the 
great things of after-times, the temporal power was 
chosen to receive the vision of what should follow, 
when its course terminated in the kingdom of Christ. 
At this place, therefore, the language of holy Scrip- 
ture alters, and speaks not in Hebrew, as to the 
chosen nation, but in the dialect of their Chaldaaan 
conquerors. 42 The king of Babylon himself is chosen 
to witness to Messiah's power. He consults the 
wise men of his kingdom, and seeks by their earthly 
wisdom to interpret his vision. They fail him, and 
he is driven to that spiritual power with which at 
this very period he had been brought into connexion. 
Daniel told him, " there is a God in heaven that 
revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king 
Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. 
As for thee, O king, thy thoughts came into thy 
mind upon thy bed, what should come to pass here- 
after : and He that revealeth secrets maketh known 
to thee what shall come to pass. Thou, O king, 
sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, 
whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee ; 
and the form thereof was terrible. This image's 
head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of 
silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of 
iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou 
sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, 
which smote the image upon his feet that were of 
iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was 
the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, 
broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff 
of the summer threshing-floors ; and the wind car- 
ried them away, that no place was found for them: 

42 Dan. si. 4, et infra. 



Nebuchadnezzar's dream. 59 

and the stone that smote the image became a great 
mountain, and filled the whole earth. This is the 
dream, and we will tell the interpretation thereof 
before the king. Thou, O king, art a king of kings ; 
for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, 
power, and strength, and glory. And wheresoever 
the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and 
the fowls of the heaven hath He given into thine 
hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou 
art this head of gold. And after thee shall arise 
another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third 
kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over ail the 
earth. And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as 
iron : forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and 
subdueth all things : and as iron that breaketh all 
these, shall it break in pieces and bruise. And in 
the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set 
up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed : and 
the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it 
shall break in pieces and consume all these king- 
doms, and it shall stand for ever. Forasmuch as 
thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the moun- 
tain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the 
iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; 
the great God hath made known to the king what 
shall come to pass hereafter : and the dream is cer- 
tain, and the interpretation thereof sure." 43 

To explain every particular of this prophecy is 
unnecessary, and perhaps with our present know- 
ledge impossible; but its general purpose cannot 
be mistaken. We have here the Babylonish empire 
which then existed, the Persian which followed after, 
the Grecian which succeeded it, the Roman which 
was to come last of ail. Upon the ruins of the 
Roman empire Christ's Church was to arise. No 

** Dan. ii. 28. 



60 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

other empire was afterwards to exist with that pre- 
eminence and authority which these four had succes- 
sively possessed. If others arose, which were equal 
in actual strength, yet they were not to have the 
same comparative superiority. No empire after the 
Roman was to fill the theatre of the world as these 
did. The great event of following times was to be 
the establishment of Christ's Church. And so it has 
happened. There have been great kingdoms in later 
days ; but there has been none which could clearly 
be said to be chief. These four empires, each in 
their day, were so. They filled the earth as the 
chief figure fills a picture, not by occupying the 
whole, but by leaving space for no figure besides it. 
So does one sun fill the sky, if not by its actual 
bulk, j et by the effluence of its beams. 

Such in their day were the four empires of 
Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Such, still 
more, is rhe Church of Christ, which was to succeed 
them. The history of these five kingdoms makes 
up the history of the world. And this great sum- 
mary of the fortunes of mankind God was pleased 
to give just when the first empire had gained its 
summit of greatness. And, as though to add to it 
greater solemnity and interest, the celebrated king, 
through whom it was revealed, exhibited in his own 
person a proof of the true source of power, and was 
shewn that " the Most High ruleth in the kingdoms 
of men." Of this he himself published a record for 
the instruction of the nations. 

" I thought it good," he says, " to shew the 
signs and wonders that the high God hath wrought 
toward me. How great are His signs, and how 
mighty are His wonders ! His kingdom is an ever- 
lasting kingdom, and His dominion is from genera- 
tion to generation." 44 Nebuchadnezzar then relates 
44 Dan. iv. 2. 



Nebuchadnezzar's confession. 61 

how it pleased Cod when he was at the very pin- 
nacle of greatness, to predict his sudden fall. He 
might have expected an earthly enemy ; but he fell 
without human hand. " At the end of twelve 
months he walked in the palace of the kingdom of 
Babylon. The king spake, and said, Is not this 
great Babylon, that I have built for the house of 
the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the 
honour of my majesty ? While the word was in the 
king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, saying, 

king Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is Spoken ; the 
kingdom is departed from thee. And they shall 
drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with 
the beasts of the field : they shall make thee to eat 
grass as oxen, and seven times shall pass over thee, 
until thou know that the Most High ruleth in the 
kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He 
will. The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon 
Nebuchadnezzar: and he was driven from men, and 
did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with 
the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like 
eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws. And 
at the end of the days, 1 Nebuchadnezzar lifted up 
mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding re- 
turned unto me, and I blessed the Most High, and 

1 praised and honoured Him that liveth for ever, 
whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His 
kingdom* is from generation to generation. And all 
the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing : 
and He doeth according to His will in the army of 
heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth : 
and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him, What 
doest Thou ? At the same time my reason returned 
unto me ; and for the glory of my kingdom, mine 
honour and brightness returned unto me ; and my 
counsellors and my lords sought unto me; and I was 

G 



62 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

established in my kingdom, and excellent majesty 
was added unto me. Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise 
and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose 
works are truth, and His ways judgment : and those 
that walk in pride He is able to abase." 



CHAPTER X. 

Persian, or seconfc great ©mpfre. 

CYRUS — CRCESUS — ORACLE AT DELPHI — BABYLON TAKEN — 

DANIEL TEMPLE DESTROYED — CAMBYSES SMERDIS THE 

MAGIAN — DARIUS HYSTASPES — SCYTHIAN EXPEDITION. 

He look'd, and saw what numbers numberless 

The city-gates outpour'd, light-armed troops 

In coats of mail and military pride : 

In mail their horses clad, yet fleet and strong, 

Prancing their riders bore, the flower and choice 

Of many provinces from bound to bound : — 

He saw them in their forms of battle rang'd, 

How quick they wheel'd ; and flying behind them shot 

Sharp steel of arrowy showers against the face 

Of their pursuers, and o'ercame by flight : 

The field, all iron, cast a gleaming brown. 

Milton. 

The Assyrian empire Lad reached its height under 
Nebuchadnezzar; it fell with his grandson Belshaz- 
zar. During the reign of this prince, the Median 
nation grew powerful, and being- assisted by the 
Persians, it conquered, one by one, most countries 
of the' East. The cavalry of the Medes and Per- 
sians was long celebrated as^he best, as well as 
most numerous in the world; and the corrupted 
Babylonians were unable to make any successful 
head against the vigour and hardihood of these 
children of Japheth. 

Their success must likewise be attributed to 
the wisdom and courage of Cyrus, prince of Persia. 
Of his birth and education, many stories are told. 
Some 1 say that his grandfather, the king of Media, 
to whom the Persians were then subject, would 

1 Herod, i. 108, &c 



64 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

have put him to death when a boy, through fear 
of a dream which predicted his future greatness. A 
shepherd, who was ordered to destroy him, brought 
him up as his own child ; and other boys of his own 
age chose him as their leader. When he was known, 
his spirit and appearance won his grandfather's fa- 
vour, and he was raised again to the command 
which naturally belonged to him. All agree that 
his childhood gave remarkable promise, which was 
not disappointed by his age. Him, therefore, God 
raised up to found the second of those great empires 
which He had declared should fill the earth. Three 
times is the extent, nature, and order, of this king- 
dom predicted in the book of Daniel. 2 When the 
last prediction was given, 3 the Medes and Persians 
had begun to grow to power; and the prophet de- 
clares that the Persians, who were at first the infe- 
rior nation, should in the end have the superiority : 
" I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and, behold, there 
stood before the river a ram which had two horns : 
and the two horns were high ; but one was higher 
than the other, and the higher came up last. I 
saw the ram pushing westward, and northward, and 
southward ; so that no beasts might stand before 
him, neither was there any that could deliver out 
of his hand ; but he did according to his will, and 
became great." 4 

This superiority t)f the Persians to their Median 
neighbours was not derived from their larger num- 
oers, but from their possessing a greater measure 
of that courage and good conduct in which both 
these tribes were superior to the other people of the 
East. Herodotus describes their modes of educa- 
tion even after they had left their own poor and 

2 Dan ii. 39 ; vii. 5; viii. 3. J B.C. 553. 

4 Dan. viii. o, 4. 



ZOROASTER. 65 

mountainous country : " they teacli their children, 
from the age of five years to that of twenty, these 
three things — to ride, to shoot with the bow, and to 
speak the truth." 5 Besides the great contrast which 
their country exhibited to the enervating plains of 
the wealthy Babylonians, they had also received a 
purer system from a remarkable teacher named Zo- 
roaster, 6 who had lived some time before the age of 
Cyrus. By him they had been taught the folly of 
that worship of images which was common in the 
East ; 7 and even the errors of his system tended to 
the increase of their national strength. His opi- 
nions were derived from the feeling (not unnatural 
on an imperfect view of the world), that good and 
evil were two independent principles, which were 
striving for the mastery in this state of being. These 
principles he supposed to be embodied in actually 
existing beings, attended by their ministering spi- 
rits ; the good he called Ormus, and the bad, Ahri- 
man. The empire of the good spirit he supposed 
to be especially set lortn in his own people, whose 
office, therefore, was to establish a kingdom, in 
which the principles of excellence might be fully 
exhibited. 8 Hence his special attention to agricul- 
ture, as being a development of the internal powers 
of the earth, of which we afterwards see traces in 
the Persian government. 9 Thus was " the earnest 
expectation of the creature waiting for the mani- 
festation of the sons of God," and thus were the 
founders of earthly monarchies anticipating that re- 
sult which the Church of Christ can alone supply. 

It was in this discipline, then, that Cyrus was 
trained up to be the conqueror of the East. After 

5 Herod, i. 136. 6 Heeren, Ideen, i. § 1, p. 440. 

' Herod, i. 131. 

8 Zendavesta ; quoted bv Heeren, Ideen, i. § 1, p. 447. 

9 Heeren, i § 1, p. 4<j3." 



66 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

establishing the superiority of the Persians over their 
Median brethren, he reduced the warlike tribes to 
the north of Assyria, and thus came into contact 
with Croesus, king of Lydia, who ruled over the 
greatest part of Asia Minor. 10 Croesus had for some 
time been preparing for the conflict. He had taken 
the singular course of consulting the oracle at Delphi, 
which was highly esteemed among the neighbouring 
states of Greece ; having previously tested the reality 
of its powers. This oracle was supposed to be di- 
rected by Apollo, or Pytho as the Greeks called him, 
the same spirit which the apostle cast forth from the 
damsel at Philippi. 11 In that case we are assured 
that the damsel's power of divination was real, be- 
cause, if merely pretended, her masters would not 
have lost their hopes of gain ; and in like manner 
the oracle at Delphi at times discovered knowledge 
which mere human nature could not attain. That 
such powers are not possessed at present by evil 
spirits, is no proof that they were not formerly exer- 
cised; because the Church is holy ground, and at 
our Lord's coming, "the prince of the power of the 
air" "fell from heaven." Croesus's experiment sa- 
tisfied him of the wisdom of the oracle at Delphi- 
He sent messengers from Sardis, his capital, to va- 
rious oracles, and ordered them on the hundredth 
day after their departure (so rude was then the mode 
of estimating time) to enter the consecrated places, 
where answers were given, and to inquire in what 
Croesus, king of Lydia, was at that time employed. 12 
Upon the appointed day, he bethought him of what 
would be the most unlikely occupation in which he 
could spend his time ; and having procured the flesh 
of a tortoise and mixed it with that of a lamb, he 
boiled it in a brazen caldron under a brazen lid. 

10 Xenoph Cyiop. " Acts xvi. 10' (margin). 

1-2 Herod I 47, 48 



b.c 548. 



DELPHIAN ORACLE. G7 



Shortly afterwards his messengers returned, havi..g 
written down the answers which were severally made 
to them. The others are not recorded ; but the mes- 
senger who had been sent to Delphi related that he 
had no sooner proposed his question, than the Py- 
thoness, or woman who gave the answer, replied — 

" I know the sea and sands expanse, 

Nor thoughts unutter'd 'scape my glance: 
Of tortoise-flesh I scent the smell, 
In boiling caldron sodden well, 
With weanling of the woolly drove ; 
Brass beneath and brass above." 

Convinced by this answer of the wisdom of the 
oracle, Croesus, after making many rich offerings, 
consulted it on the result of his war with Cyrus. 
Its answers shew, that if the oracle had some extra- 
ordinary power of detecting what was passing at a 
distance, yet, respecting the future, it could only 
exercise such sagacity as might delude its votaries, 
and secure itself from detection. Croesus was told 
that if he passed the river Halys — the boundary 
between himself and the Persians — he should destroy 
a great empire ; and again, that he was secure till a 
mule sat upon the throne of Media. When, in re- 
liance on these assurances, he had attacked Cyrus, 13 
been defeated and taken prisoner, he was told that 
the mule was Cyrus, born of a Median and Persian 
parent, and that the empire which he had overturned 
was his own. 14 

After the conquest of Lydia, Cyrus turned his 
arms against Babylon, which the Jewish prophets 
had so long before declared that he should destroy. 
Isaiah had marked him out by name as the deliverer 
who should end the captivity of the Jews, and re- 
store their temple and city. God had said, " of 

13 b.c. .318. " Herod, i. 91 



68 1HE FIVE EMPIRES. b.c. 538. 

Cyrus, lie is My shepherd, and shall perform all My 
pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be 
built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be 
laid." 15 

But how was this to be accomplished, seeing the 
Jews were still captives in the vast city of Babylon ? 
The walls of Babylon were so high, it was so well 
defended by the river and by its brazen gates, that 
it seemed impossible to enter it. The people within 
had provisions enough for many years. 16 But how 
shall men prevent what God has ordered? Cyrus 
had heard, that, when the bridge over the Euphrates 
was built at Babylon, the river had been received 
into a temporary lake, which had been dug some 
distance above the city. 17 Leaving a sufficient force, 
therefore, to invest the walls, he employed the rest 
of his army in clearing out this lake, which had now 
become a marsh, and in making a great cut to it 
from the river. When this was opened, the whole 
stream ran into it, and left the channel which led 
through the city nearly dry. Along this passage his 
army marched. But they still had to pass the rlank- 
ing-wail, which was raised within along each bank 
of the river, and which could only be entered, like 
the outer fortifications, by brazen gates. How was 
this difficulty to be overcome ? An express predic- 
tion had long before been given ; God had said, " I 
will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the 
two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut." 13 
The very night when Cyrus attempted to enter the 
city, king Belshazzar made a great feast to a thou- 
sand of his lords, and brought forth the sacred vessels 
which had been taken from the temple of Jerusalem. 
Amidst their festivity they were off their guard; 
thus the girdle of their loins was loosed, and they 

15 Isaiah xliv. 28. 16 Herod, i. IPO. 

17 Herod, i. 191. 1S Isaiah xlv. 1. 



B.C. 538. BABYLON TAKEN. 69 

forgot the brazen gates. The enemy entered in; 
Belshazzar's kingdom was taken from him, and given 
to the Medes and Persians. 19 Thus was accomplished 
what God had spoken concerning Cyrus, " I will go 
before thee, and make the crooked places straight; 
I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in 
sunder the bars of iron: and I will give thee the 
treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret 
places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, 
which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel. 
For Jacob My servant's sake, and Israel Mine elect, 
I have even called thee by thy name; I have sur- 
named thee, though thou hast not known Me." 20 

After the taking of Babylon, the era of the com- 
plete establishment of the Persian power, Cyrus left 
the supreme authority nominally in the hands of 
Darius the Mede, — according to Xenophon, his uncle, 
who lived, however, little more than a year longer. 21 
Under both these princes, Daniel was chosen to ex- 
ercise the office of chief president over the hundred 
and twenty princes who seem to have been appointed 
over the king's revenue. 22 I 'is wisdom and incor- 
mptness in this high office — virtues which the Per- 
sians afterwards found it scarce possible to secure in 
those who filled the like place — afford an example 
to all rulers, of the advantage of conducting public 
duties in the fear of God. For with all this vast 
burden, he found time to pray to God three times a 
day, and in consequence he continued " faithful, 
neither was there any error or fault found in him." 23 
His influence may have facilitated the restoration of 
his nation to their own land ; but the measure was 
so contrary to the ordinary policy of the Persians, 
whose object always was to break up the ties which 
bound together the subject-states of their empire, 

19 Heiod. i. 191. B.C. . r >38. 20 Isa. xlv, 2-4. 

al Dan. v. 32. 2a Dan. vi. 2. " Dan. vi. 4. 



70 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B .C. 536 

that its real motive can be found only in the de- 
claration which commences the book of Ezra, that 
" the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cvrus, king of 
Persia." 2 

The seventy years, during which God had de- 
clared that Jerusalem and Judah should remain 
desolate, were now accomplished. 25 During many 
years the Jews had neglected to keep the Sabbaths 
which had been commanded; and when continued 
impunity had made them think the law forgotten, 
their land had been allowed this long rest during 
their captivity. But at length came the hour for 
their return, and Cyrus made proclamation that they 
might re-occupy their land 26 and rebuild their tem- 
ple. 27 They laid its foundation amidst the rejoicing 
of the young ; but the old men, who remembered the 
first temple, wept to see how inferior was the magni- 
ficence of the new one. And yet the prophets fore- 
told that this new house should be witness to the 
glory of His coming, whose presence would more 
than make up for the lack of earthly splendour. 
Daniel had been just instructed that in four hundred 
and thirty-four years from the completion of the 
temple should come that Messiah whom the temple 
was meant to honour. 28 " The glory of this latter 
house shall be greater than of the former; and in this 
place will I give peace, saith the Lord of Hosts." 29 
The signal glory of the former house had been God's 
immediate presence in the holy of holies, where a 
cloud filled the temple. The greater glory of the 
second house was that our Lord appeared there in 
person; as He assures us that He still does in 
the consecrated assemblies of His Church from age 
to age. 

24 Ezra i. 1. 25 Jeremiah ; Dan. ix. 2. 

26 2 Chron. xxxvi. 21. B.C. 536. 2 ? Ezra i. 2. 

28 Dan. ix. 25. 29 Haggai ii. 9. 



B.C. 525. THE TEMPLE REBUILT. 71 

The Jews continued to build their temple during 
the time of Cyrus, and of Cambyses his son. The 
principal achievement of Cambyses was the con- 
quest of Egypt, 30 where he put to death Psammenitus, 
the son of Amasis the last prince of Egyptian blood. 
Amasis had rebelled against Apries 31 soon after 
Nebuchadnezzar s invasion of Egypt, 32 and had lately 
died, after a prosperous reign. With Psammenitus 
ended the independence of Egypt ; it has never since 
had a prince of its own, but has fulfilled Ezekiel's 
prophecy, that " it shall be the basest of kingdoms ; 
neither shall it exalt itself any more above the na- 
tions." 33 " And there shall be no more a prince of 
the land of Egypt," But though successful in this 
expedition, Cambyses had made himself hated by his 
folly and tyranny; and on his death 3 * the crown was 
usurped by a magian, a priest of the sun, who pre- 
tended to be Smerdis, a younger son of Cyrus. This 
magian, called in Scripture Artaxerxes, ordered the 
Jews to cease from their work. 35 But his reign was not 
of long continuance. His insurrection was, in truth, 
an attempt by covert means to restore the supreme 
power to the Medians, to which nation he belonged. 36 
This was shortly suspected by the Persian nobles; 
but as he greatly resembled the son of Cyrus, whose 
name he had adopted, they waited for some time be- 
fore taking decisive means for his destruction. In 
order to escape detection, he seldom left the palace. 
But a nobleman, whose sister he had married when 
he became king, desired her to feel whether he had 
lost his ears, 37 — a punishment which had been in- 
flicted on the magian in the time of Cyrus. She sent 
word that his ears had been cut off; and the chief 

30 b.c. 525. 3l b c. 569. 

32 Vide p. 56. 33 Ezek. xxix. 15. 

34 b.c. 522. « Ezra iv. 21. 

36 Herod, iii. 65. & Herod iii. 68. 



72 THE FIVE EMPIRES. b.c. 5 i 9. 

Persians, satisfied that he was not the son of their 
first leader, conspired and slew him. Darius, one 
of the seven who had joined in this attempt, was 
made king by the rest. 38 They had agreed to meet 
on horseback, and that the one whose horse first 
neighed should have the crown. 

This Darius, called Hystaspes, renewed the de- 
cree of Cyrus, by which the Jews were allowed to 
rebuild their temple. 39 He was the restorer of the 
Persian empire, which the magian, to gain favour 
with his subjects, had allowed to fall into confusion; 
or it may rather be said, he was the refouuder of a 
system of which Cyras had only left the outline: 40 
for under Darius the Persian empire was divided into 
its twenty great satrapies;' 1 the public revenue which 
before had consisted merely of arbitrary contribu- 
tions, was fixed and arranged; 42 money was coined 
which bore his name [Darics] ; and it is probable 
that the roads and the public posts were then intro- 
duced, 43 by which intelligence Mas communicated 
throughout the empire. Hence the Persians, who 
styled Cyrus the father, and Cambyses the master, of 
his people, called Darius the merchant king. 44 

Herodotus gives a detailed account of the several 
nations which constituted the Persian empire, — an 
empire which extended south-east as far as the river 
Indus, northward till it touched the tribes of Scythia, 
and west as far as the Mediterranean Sea. Besides 
its tribute of money, every part of this vast country 
was bound to supply provisions for the king's court, 
his servants, and armies. The court moved accord- 
ing to the season of the year, spending the winter in 
the warmer plains of Babylon, the summer at Ec- 

38 b c. .521. 39 b.c. 519. Ezra vi. 

40 Herod iii. 67. 41 Herod Hi. 89. 

42 He* ren, i. § 1, p. 417. «■ Herod, viii. 98. 

44 Herod, iii. 89 



RC# 519. PERSIAN POLICY. 73 

batana in the Median mountains, the spring at 
Susa. 45 At each period a particular district was 
charged for its support, which the Babylonian pro- 
vince supported during four months of the year. 46 
The habit of imposing on particular spots a specific 
duty was usual with the Persians ; thus four villages 
were assigned to provide food for the Indian dogs of 
Tritanaechmes, the satrap of Babylon. 47 

The same principle which prevailed in the king's 
court was applied in its degree to each dependent 
satrap. Every one had his court ; and the province 
was bound, besides its tribute, to give him susten- 
ance. The satrap was possessed of almost supreme 
power in his own government; but as a check on 
his authority, the military force of the province was 
placed under a different officer, who was responsible 
only to the great king. 48 When the Persian system 
fell into confusion, these powers were sometimes 
united, and then the satrap became for a time an 
independent prince. This difficulty was experienced 
even in the time of Darius, at whose accession to the 
throne, Phrygia, Lydia, and Ionia, were in the hands 
of a satrap named Orcetes, who was guarded by a 
thousand Persians, and, though professing allegiance 
to the king, was acting like an independent mon- 
arch. He had put several Persians of distinction to 
death ; 49 and a messenger sent to him with the king's 
orders he privately despatched. Anxious for the re- 
moval of this rebel without the risk of a civil war, 
Darius stated the case to his most trusted adherents, 
thirty of whom immediately volunteered the destruc- 
tion of Orcetes. Bagaeus, who was chosen from the 
rest by lot for this dangerous service, provided him- 
self with a number of various rolls, each containing 

45 Xenoph. Cyrop. viii. 6, § 22. « Herod, i. 192. 

47 Herod, i. 192. « Xenoph. Cyrop. viii. 6, § 1. 

40 Herod, iii. 126. 



74 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 505. 

an order on some subject from the king, and sanc- 
tioned by his seal. 50 With these he went to Sardis, 
and presented himself to Orcetes in public, when sur- 
rounded by his guards. Taking forth a roll, which 
related to some subject of little moment, he gave it 
to the royal scribe, who was always in attendance 
on a satrap. Perceiving that the attendant Per- 
sians displayed the greatest reverence for a docu- 
ment which bore the royal seal, he ventured to pro- 
duce a more important order: " Persians, King 
Darius orders you not to act as guards to Orcetes." 
Seeing the attendant soldiers immediately ground 
their arms, Bagaeus produced his last roll: " King 
Darius orders the Persians in Sardis to kill Orcetes," 
— an injunction which the satrap's own guards in- 
stantly obeyed. 

When Darius had consolidated his empire, he 
looked round for some means of employing the 
restless spirit of his subjects, and of dazzling them 
by the splendour of military renown. 51 With this 
view he marched with a large army against the 
Scythians, crossed into Europe by the Thracian 
Bosphorus (the Straits of Constantinople), and after- 
wards passing the Danube by a bridge of boats. 
But the poverty of the country which he entered, 
inhabited only by wandering tribes, was fatal to his 
success ; and but for the fidelity of the Ionian chiefs, 
whom he had left on the Danube as guards of the 
bridge, his whole army must have perished. 52 Hero- 
dotus marks the simplicity of manners, by relating 
that Darius gave the Ionians a thong containing 
sixty knots, bidding them to loose one a day, and to 
return home when the whole number was told out. 
But when this was done, they learned from a detach- 
ment of Scythians, which visited them, that Darius 

50 Herod, iii. 128, fiJ Herod, iii. 134. c2 Herod, iv. 98. 



B.C. -508. SCYTHIAN EXPEDITION. 7b 

was involved in extreme difficulties. .As the autho- 
rity of the Ionian chiefs in their several cities was 
altogether dependent on the favour of the Persians, 
they were persuaded by Histiaeus, the tyrant of Mi- 
letus (in opposition to the counsels of Miltiades the 
Athenian, who held the same office in the Tbracian 
Chersonese,) to await the king's return. 

Meanwhile Darius, having advanced as far as 
the Volga, 53 and having afterwards pursued the 
Scythians into the western part of Russia, found his 
army perishing from fatigue and want, and that, as 
its strength decayed, the Scythians began to make 
head against him. The Scythian horsemen now at- 
tacked and discomfited the Persian cavalry, though 
upon infantry they were unable to make any im- 
pression. At length the Scythians sent him a herald 
charged with the following presents, a mouse, a bird, 
a frog, and five arrows. At first he hoped that 
this was a sign that they surrendered their earth, 
their air, their waters, and their military prowess. 
But the event soon shewed that the right interpreta- 
tion was that given by Gobryas, one of the seven 
Persian nobles who had placed him upon the throne: 
" Unless you can fly like birds, or like mice can bur- 
row under the earth, or like frogs can plunge into the 
waters, you will never return, but will perish by these 
arrows." . 

Alarmed by the threat, Darius followed the ad- 
vice which Gobryas proceeded to give him ; and 
leaving his sick and wounded in the night, the more 
active part of his army escaped to the Danube, 
being happily missed by the Scythians, who, reach- 
ing the river before them by a shorter course, had 
returned again to oppose their progress. They 
found the bridge still guarded by the Ionians, who 
had only removed it for an arrow's flight from the 
B Herod, iv. 124; and Rennel, p. 103. 



76 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 508. 

Scythian shore, and who, when summoned on the 
night of their arrival by an Egyptian of peculiar 
powers of voice in the army of Darius, soon re- 
stored it again, and provided them with the means 
of escape. 

In the north of Europe, therefore, the poverty 
of the country forbade all hopes of extension for the 
Persian power. And from this time Darius's atten- 
tion was sufficiently occupied by the Grecian tribes, 
in whom the Persians found that they had to do 
with opponents very different from those whom they 
had subdued in their Asiatic wars. The Greeks, 
who were settled on the shore of Asia Minor, had 
indeed been reduced either by Croesus or Cyrus ; 
but they now began to look for succour to the inde- 
pendent states on the European shore of the iEgean. 
Histiaeus the Milesian, who had been carried by 
Darius into Persia, 54 and treated there with great 
favour, finding that his talents and ambition exposed 
him to suspicion, and that he was not allowed to 
return home, encouraged his countrymen to revolt, 
in hope that to restore quiet he should be allowed 
to revisit them. Aristagoras, who had succeeded 
Histiaeus, went himself to solicit assistance both at 
Sparta and Athens ; and though at the first place he 
failed, yet at the second he was successful. With 
the aid of the Athenians, the Ionians took and burnt 
Sardis ; 55 and though the Asiatic Greeks were after- 
wards conquered, yet a vast army sent by Darius, 
under Datis and Artaphernes, was defeated at Mara- 
thon by the Athenians. 56 They were headed by Mil- 
tiades, who had now abandoned his settlement in the 
Thracian Chersonese, and resumed the condition of 
an Athenian citizen. 

From this time it became apparent, that in the 

54 Herod v 35. 55 b.c. 499. 

56 Herod, vi. 111. b.c. 490. 



B.C. 485. XERXES. 77 

small and divided states of Greece there was a 
power which it would require all the might of the 
Persian empire to overcome, and the destiny of the 
world seemed to be dependent upon the conflict. 
Xerxes, therefore, who soon afterwards succeeded 
his father Darius, 5 " 7 resolved to bend the whole 
power of his kingdom in this direction. The coun- 
try was not like the Scythian desert, — a waste, where 
hunger was more to be dreaded than the enemy ; and 
his great wealth enabled him to overcome all the 
natural obstacles which opposed his progress. For 
so Daniel had long before predicted. He shall " be 
far richer" than all that went before him; " and by 
his strength, through his riches, he shall stir up 
all against the realm of Graecia." 58 But as this is 
marked out by the prophet as one step in that great 
chain which led subsequently to the overthrow of 
Persia herself, and to the establishment of the third 
monarchy in her room, it will be necessary to state 
what was that hidden power which already was be- 
ginning to plume its wings for flight on the west of 
the iEgean, and how the empire of the world was 
gradually transferred from Asia to Europe. 

5 < B.C. 485. w Pan. xi. 2. 



H 'JL 



CHAPTER XL 
&rman, ox Wxo ©reat ^Empire. 

OFFICE OF THE THIRD EMPIRE — CHARACTER OF THE GREEKS 

THEIR INDEPENDENCE THEIR CONNEXION HOMER 

SPARTA — OBJECT AND MEASURES OF LYCURGUS XERXES* 

EXPEDITION AGAINST GREECE NUMBERS OF HIS ARMY — 

THERMOPYLjE — ATHENIAN CHARACTER — SOLON PISIS- 

TRATUS WOODEN WALLS THEMISTOCLES SALAMIS 

PLAT^A — CONSEQUENCES OF THE PERSIAN EXPEDITION. 

Immortal Greece ! dear land of glorious lays, 

See here the unknown God of thy unconscious praise. 

Christian Fear. 

In the two preceding empires there is little which, 
to an ordinary spectator, might seem to exercise 
any lasting influence on the fortunes of mankind. 
The history of nations seemed, indeed, to have run 
through two stages of more than usual importance ; 
and twice did the wealth and power of the world 
find centres round which they were collected. But 
a new scene now presents itself. The two centuries 
during which the third empire was attaining its 
perfection gave opportunity for a grand experiment, 
which forms nearly the most interesting portion in 
the history of the world. For this was the season 
in which came the decisive trial, how far the perfec- 
tion of human talent, and the might of earthly law, 
could avail towards regenerating mankind. 

The grand object of history has been stated, in 
these pages, to be the development of those means 
by which the lost image of God may be recovered 
Prophecy declared, from the first, that this would 
be obtained through a gift to be bestowed upon one 






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XA3T EMPIIIE^ 




GRECIAN CHARACTER. 79 

chosen people. Prophecy next took a wider range, — 
declared what should be the general combinations 
of human society — the four great forms of worldly 
empire,— and that they should minister in some way 
towards the full attainment of this heavenly blessing. 
The gift, indeed, was to be a gift of God, yet was 
human instrumentality to concur in its extension. 
And the first two empires had in reality done their 
part in this great design. The first, by early con- 
centrating the wealth of the East, had afforded the 
means of setting forth the spectacle of the latter 
days in the middle theatre of the world. The second 
had acted as the preserver of that chosen people, 
through whom God's blessing was to be given. And 
now the third was to supply its portion, by provid- 
ing an universal language, and by so extending the 
intellect of man as to enable him to do more justice 
to the communications of Heaven. But this it did 
through efforts which had another object, of which 
the daring design was to attain, through human 
means, what could only be effected through the gift 
of God. It is this remarkable attempt which must 
now be stated. 

In ancient Greece mankind had attained to the 
greatest perfection of which mere human nature is 
susceptible. A climate mild, but not relaxing — a 
face of nature romantic, but not savage — freedom 
and sufficiency, such as resulted from their middle 
situation between the empires of the East and the 
barbarians of Europe, — through these circumstances 
it had pleased God to develope all the energies of 
man's nature in this portion of the seed of Japheth. 
They possessed an ability, and a sense of beauty, 
which, though it might be debased into selfishness 
and sensuality, yet formed also the best substratum 
for wisdom and purity. It was a peculiar circum- 
stance in their history, that they were neither sub- 



80 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

ject, like the nations of the East, to a single chief, 
nor, like the rude barbarians of the West, were des- 
titute of national union. This independence of their 
several small communities resulted from those fre- 
quent migrations of their different families among 
one another, which prevented the establishment of 
any single power. At an early period of their his- 
tory, the race of Agamemnon appeared likely to 
gain predominance ; but they were afterwards ejected 
from their possessions by the Dorians, a different 
tribe of Greeks, headed by the Heraclidse, or de- 
scendants of Hercules. These occupied the larger 
part of Peloponnesus, while the Ionians were masters 
of Attica, whence they spread to the Asiatic shore 
of the JEgean. Both were descended from Javan, 
the son of Japheth, and were those children of 
Elishah [Hellas] by whom "the isles of the Gen- 
tiles were divided in their lands." * 

But along with the independence which might 
have issued in the loss of all community of feeling, 
the Grecian tribes had likewise a bond of union 
peculiar to themselves. This was the recollection 
of a common enterprise, in which, through the 
influence of some chiefs of the house of Pelops, 
their ancestors had been engaged against Troy, a 
city on the Asiatic shore of the Hellespont. This ex- 
pedition had taken place about the time of Jephtha. 2 
The Trojans were assisted by various tribes in Asia 
Minor ; and the union of the different Grecian states 
against them had given a national character to the 
enterprise. But this feeling might have passed away, 
if the destruction of Troy, and the events which fol- 
lowed, had not been chosen by the poet Homer 3 as 

1 Gen. x. 5. b.c. 1184* 

3 The Odyssey bears marks of a later date than the Iliad ; 
but the difference is not greater than might have arisen within 
the lifetime of one man. The opinion that these poems were 



MORAL UNION OF THE GREEKS. 81 

the subject for those great epic poems which still 
remain as a witness that human genius is in one 
respect like God's inspiration — namely, that it ad- 
mits of no improvement from following times. This 
first of all the sublime works of man's genius still 
continues to be the greatest. To Homer the Greeks 
owe the fact of their existence as a nation — he fixed 
their language, he embodied their national traditions, 
he associated them by the tie of common recollec- 
tions ; and to that independence which was required 
for the development of their energy, he united that 
order which was essential to their civilisation. 

The national feeling, which Homer had done so 
much to encourage, was cherished by the ties of a 
common religion, by the habit of consulting the 
same oracle at Delphi, by the influence of a national 
assembly (the Amphictyons), which was connected 
with it, and by the public games (Olympic, Pythian, 
Nemean), in which all persons of Hellenic race were 
allowed to contend. Thus were they bound toge- 
ther by the tie of moral unity : it must have seemed 
to them as though the presiding deities of their race 
had selected them for the achievement of ends, and 
the reception of blessings, with which no foreign 
hands might interfere. Yet for many generations 
after .the Trojan war, the Greeks did nothing which 
rendered them distinguished among the nations of 
the world ; and that higher development of civil life, 
to which the independence of their several cities was 
conducting them, appeared for a time to exclude 
them from power. It excited the ridicule of Cyrus, 

the work of many hands, is an instance of the ingenious argu- 
ments which may be advanced for what is manifestly false. 
That a single man should have been so superior as Homer to 
his many imitators is extraordinary ; that a whole generation 
should have been possessed of this pre-eminence is incon- 
ceivable. 



82 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

who, comparing the want of concord which prevailed 
among these unconnected burghers with his own 
well-cemented empire, told them, when they inter- 
ceded for their brethren the Asiatic Greeks, that 
" he had no fear of men who had a place of assem- 
bly in the midst of their city, where they met and 
deceived one another." 4 

Yet the Spartan state, to which Cyrus made this 
reply, afforded the most singular spectacle which the 
world had yet beheld. On the conquest of Pelopon- 
nesus by the Dorians, about eighty years after the 
Trojan war, 5 the country of Laconia, or Lacedaemon, 
had been allotted to two brothers, Euristhenes and 
Procles, and their followers. The descendants of 
these brothers ruled as joint kings; 6 but the title, in 
the early times of Greece, meant nothing but general 
in war, and first magistrate in peace, every citizen 
having a voice in the public determinations. The 
rights of a citizen, however, did not belong to every 
freeman who settled in the country ; they were strictly 
hereditary, and were limited to the children of the 
original settlers. After the Dorian settlement, great 
disputes arose concerning this right in Laconia ; and 
at length the inhabitants of Sparta obtained it as their 
own exclusive possession, leaving personal liberty ; 
but without political power, to the other Lacedaemo- 
nians. (Hence they w r ere called Periceci, i.e. dwellers 
round about the original families.) The Helots, or 
inhabitants of Helos, refusing to submit, were reduced 
to slavery. 

But the factions in Lacedaemon still continued, 
till Lycurgus, uncle and guardian of Charilaus, gave 
to the Spartans that celebrated code of laws which 
was the means of moulding their future character. 7 
He had visited Crete, which was celebrated for its 

4 Herod, i. 153.. d b.c. 1102. 6 Herod, vi. 52. 

7 b.c. 880. Herod, i. 6a. 



LYCURGUS. 83 

constitution, and had travelled as far as Asia Minor, 
to observe the manners of different states. Viewed 
in a political aspect, his legislation was but the 
application of the common principles of the Do- 
rian race. By establishing a senate of twenty-eight 
elders, he gave a more aristocratical character to the 
constitution ; but he left the principle of hereditary 
citizenship untouched. Yet it was the moral part 
of his system which was so remarkable. His object 
was to destroy the factions which had so con- 
stantly endangered the existence of the state. For 
this purpose it was necessary to extinguish those 
evil tendencies in which they originated. This 
could no otherwise be effected by human law, than 
through some system which should cut off the temp- 
tations to crime, and deprive men of those indivi- 
dual influences which had proved so dangerous. 8 
He determined, therefore, to destroy all independent 
action; to render each man but a member of the 
public body ; and thus to do away the incentives to 
crime, by destroying all the impulses of nature. He 
divided Laconia into thirty-nine thousand districts 
(nine thousand to the Spartans, and thirty thousand 
to the other Lacedaemonians) ; and by rendering 
them inalienable, he hoped to exclude either poverty 
or wealth from the families of his citizens. For the 
same purpose he enjoined the exclusive employment 
of iron money, which by its cumbrous bulk was 
comparatively useless. A common table ; the ex- 
penditure of their time in warlike exercises ; the 
habit of living, not as members of a private family, 
but as portions of a public body, — these completed 
Lycurgus's plan of reducing the Spartan habits to 
the discipline and order of a garrison in a hostile 
country. 

8 Vide, on this subject, Maurice's Lectures on National 
Education, lect. i. 



84 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

But though this system prevented many crimes, 
it was by the sacrifice of as many virtues. For with 
the worst, the Spartans lost the best part of huma- 
nity. The arts of life, the desire of knowledge, the 
ties of domestic life, the affections which purify and 
ennoble the mind, were destroyed. Yet in one 
respect the purpose of Lycurgus was answered. 
Sparta became a powerful city ; its inhabitants were 
free from the disturbances which weakened the rest 
of Greece ; so that, by the time of the Persian expe- 
dition, the universal consent of its other states con- 
ceded to them the pre-eminence. 9 But for them 
and the Athenians, the Persian power would not 
have been resisted. When Darius first aimed at 
the subjection of the Greeks, he &ent heralds to de- 
mand earth and water, as a sign of submission : 10 at 
Athens and Sparta they were roughly treated ; but 
the islanders, and a considerable portion of the con- 
tinental Greeks, gave this token of obedience. And 
now the Spartans prepared to oppose the countless 
host with which Xerxes threatened Greece ; and as 
a public festival prevented them from marching im- 
mediately against him, they sent Leonidas, one of 
their kings, with three hundred Spartans, and a 
small force of their allies, to occupy the pass of 
Thermopylae. 11 

Meanwhile Xerxes led on his vast army, 12 in the 
preparation of w r hich the whole East had been en- 
gaged during several years. 13 Having passed the 
winter at Sardis, he prepared in the spring to cross 
the Hellespont by a bridge of boats formed by his 
Phoenician and Egyptian fleets, opposite to Abydos. 14 
But just as he was about to pass, his bridge was 

9 Herod, vii. 159, and viii. 2. 

10 Herod, vi. 49, and vii. 133. 

11 Herod, vii. 201. ,2 B.C. 481. 
13 Herod, vii. 1 and following chapters. u b.c^ 480. 



B.C. 480. EXPEDITION OF XERXES. 85 

broken, and the vessels which composed it dispersed 
by a storm. Xerxes, in an access of passion, be- 
headed those who had superintended its prepara- 
tion : and, whether from pride or childish petulance, 
ordered chains to be cast, and scourges inHicted, 
upon the Hellespont. His army crossed the bridge 
so soon as it was renewed, consuming in the passage 
seven days and nights. The plains of Doriscus in 
Thrace, on the banks of the Hebrus, afforded him 
a place for mustering its numbers. Ten thousand 
men were collected in one spot, round which a fence 
was drawn, and then the same space was re-occu- 
pied by another body, till the whole had passed. 
The whole number of lighting-men was about two 
millions and a half, and at least as numerous were 
the attendants. Never was host composed of mate- 
rials so various : " Ethiopians from the south of 
Egypt in the skins of lions, and Indians in their 
cotton garments; their dark neighbours from Ge- 
drosia, mixed with the wandering Scythians from 
Bucharia; the wild Sagartian hunters, who, without 
weapons either of stone or iron, entangled their ene- 
mies in leathern thongs, like the harts which they 
hunted ; Medes and Bactrians in their rich gar- 
ments ; Libyans in their four-horse cars ; and Ara- 
bians on their camels." 15 To this must be added, a 
fleet of twelve hundred and seven ships, drawn from 
the tributary Greeks, and from the ports of Egypt 
and Phoenicia. 

Against such an armament as this Xerxes sup- 
posed that the Greeks would not attempt opposition. 
When he reached Thermopylae, and found Leonidas 
at the head of a body of about four thousand men 
from Peloponnesus, he waited four days, expecting 
that they Mould fly at his approach. The majority, 

15 Heeren, Ideen, i. § I. 518. 

I 



86 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 480. 

indeed, v. ere disposed to retreat; but Leonidas de- 
termined to remain, for the protection of the neigh- 
bouring region of Locris. At the same time, the 
Grecian fleet was stationed in the narrow passage 
between Eubcea and the continent. When Xerxes 
found that his way was opposed by this small body 
of Greeks, he ordered his Median and Cissian sol- 
diers to take them and bring them before him alive. 
And now, for the first time, he learnt the effects of 
that resolution and discipline which the Spartans 
had acquired from the institutions of Lycurgus. 
When, in the closing contest, his best troops were 
again and again defeated by this handful of men, 
his agitation became so great, that he sprung up in 
alarm from the seat which he occupied within view 
of the battle, fearing that the flower of his army 
would perish from their wondrous prowess. " How 
many of these Lacedaemonians remain ? " he said 
afterwards to Demaratus, who, having been king of 
Sparta and deprived of the throne, was now a fugi- 
tive in his court: 16 " are the whole nation of the 
same valour with those who have fallen?" "The 
whole body of the Lacedaemonians," replied Dema- 
ratus, " is considerable, and their cities numerous. 
But the capital of Lacedaemon is Sparta, a city con- 
taining about eight thousand persons. All of these 
are exactly like those who have fought here." This 
was a true answer ; for the resolution of these three 
hundred warriors was but a part of that public 
heroism which lived in every Spartan breast. Of 
this they gave proof, when the Persians had at 
length surrounded them, by sending a detachment 
over a pass among the mountains. Leonidas sent 
back his allies, except seven hundred Thespians, 
who refused to leave him ; but he himself deter- 

10 Herod, vii. 234. 



B.C. 480. TKERMOPYL^. 87 

mined to remain with his small body of men, that 
he might give a lasting evidence of the unconquer- 
able firmness of the Spartan discipline. After an 
immense slaughter of the enemy, he and his three 
hundred Spartans were slain to a man; and the fol- 
lowing epitaph, erected on the spot by the general 
council of the Greek nation, subsequently recorded 
their motive : 

" Stranger, our hest to Sparta bear, and tell 
That here obedient to her laws we fell." 

After passing Thermopylae, Xerxes directed his 
march against Attica ; one principal object of his 
expedition being to revenge himself on the Athe- 
nians, who had taken part with the Ionians in the 
destruction of Sardis, and had since defeated the 
Persians at Marathon. Had the Athenians yielded 
to his arms, as from their exposed situation might 
have been expected, and thus given into his hands 
their ships, which constituted the larger part of the 
Grecian fleet, the valour of the Peloponnesians would 
not, in the opinion of Herodotus, 17 have been of any 
avail. On Athens, he says, depended the safety of 
Greece. And the determination of Athens depended, 
in great measure, on one leading mind, which was 
providentially raised up for this national emergency. 
For the Athenians, being free from every outward 
restraint, were, like other great bodies of men, the 
prey of any one who possessed the peculiar talent of 
persuading them that what he suggested was their 
own individual will. It was impossible to conceive 
a greater contrast than they aiforded to the Lacedae- 
monians. In Sparta every thing was for strength, 
and greater resolution human nature could not con- 
ceive; in Athens all was freedom, and a resistless 
elasticity of the individual mind. Athens, too, had 
11 Herod, vii. 139. 



88 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 480. 

in Solon 18 possessed a lawgiver of consummate wis- 
dom ; but he had found it impossible to bridle that 
which was the predominant characteristic of Athe- 
nian nature, the full development of private will. 
His legislation had been more artificial than any 
which had preceded it, and resulted from the obser- 
vations of a man of great ability on the institutions 
of foreign countries, 19 as well as on the complicated 
relations of Grecian politics. While giving to all 
citizens a voice in the government, he had endea- 
voured to curb their excesses, by requiring that 
public officers should be chosen out of the wealthier 
of those classes into which he had divided them ; by 
the appointment of a senate ; and still more by the 
restraining and censorial power of the court of Are- 
opagus. But his institutions were almost immedi- 
ately impaired by the seditions raised by Pisistratus, 20 
who, gaining over the low r er orders, set himself above 
the law, and became tyrant of Athens. This title 
his children continued to bear for fifty years; though 
at times driven from their post by the powerful 
family of Alcmseon, whose leader Clisthenes in his 
turn courted the people by further alterations in 
Solon's constitution. At length, twenty-four years 
before the battle of Marathon, 21 Hipparchus, one of 
the sons of Pisistratus, was murdered by Harmodius 
and Aristogiton ; and Hippias, the other son, was 
soon afterwards driven from the city. 22 And nov> 
the Athenians entered upon the enjoyment of com- 
plete liberty. They were able to give the fullest and 
most favourable specimen of the effect of republican 
institutions, just as Sparta did of the tendencies of 
a military aristocracy ; because in both cases the 

18 Died b.c. 559. 

19 He borrowed from Egypt the plan of a " census," which 
afterwards passed to Rome. Herod, ii. 177. 

20 b.c. 560. 21 b.c. 514. 22 b.c. 510 



B.C. ISO. ATHENIAN CHARACTER. 89 

attendance of a vast body of slaves gave to the free- 
men a leisure and independence, which enabled 
them to devote their undivided attention to public 
events. A census of the inhabitants of Athens, taken 
at a later period, 23 gives but twenty-one thousand 
citizens, while the slaves are stated to be four hun- 
dred thousand. 24 

In Athens, therefore, as before in Sparta, we see 
exhibited whatever was striking in the Grecian cha- 
racter. Exquisite taste, unequalled talent, eloquence 
such as the world has not elsewhere witnessed, pro- 
found speculation, daring enterprise, heroic courage, 
— all these were combined with every thing which 
can disgust and affright the mind. And as there 
never was a state where men were better trained 
than in Sparta to serve the public, so never were 
there men who lived more than the Athenians to 
delight themselves. Yet as in Sparta it was a gene- 
rous service, rendered by freemen to their native 
land, so the Athenians were too no'de a people to 
be satisfied with mere sensual delight. The arts 
and sciences, the cultivation of the understanding, 
and the honours of military renown, were among 
their choicest gratifications. The Greek language, 
as uttered by them, was the most majestic employ- 
ment of man's common gift of speech since the crea- 
tion of the world ; and so refined was their percep- 
tion of its beauty, that the distinguished orator Theo- 
phrastus, after spending the larger part of his life 
at Athens, found, to his mortification, that a simple 
market-woman could detect in an instant that his 
ear had not been accustomed in youth to the dialect 
of Attica. 25 A people so free from outward restraint 

23 Mitford, v. 4. 

2 * Reckoning heads of families only to be counted as citizens, 
this would make the slaves about four times their number. 
a5 Cicero, Brutus, iv. § 6. 

i2 



90 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 480. 

might have been expected to shrink from the hard- 
ships and losses with which the Athenians were now 
threatened. But their conduct exhibits an instance 
of the sacrifices which a high-minded people will 
consent to make, when they feel themselves directed 
by a man of commanding genius. Such a man was 
Themistocles, who having long formed the design of 
rendering his countrymen a great naval power, and 
having induced them some years before to apply 
their revenue to the formation of a navy, 26 now per- 
suaded them to embark whatever they could carry 
with them, and trusting themselves to their "wooden 
walls," to abandon Attica to the conqueror. 27 They 
joined the rest of the Grecian fleet at Salamis ; but 
Themistocles found it difficult to retain the favour- 
able position which the narrow passage between this 
island and the mainland afforded to the Grecian 
fleet in its contest with the more numerous armament 
of Xerxes. The other Grecians, alarmed by the 
vast force which was approaching, wished to fly to 
the Isthmus of Corinth, which the Peloponnesians 
were preparing to fortify, and would thus have 
fought at great disadvantage in an open sea. The- 
mistocles, in consequence, sent private information 
of their intended flight to Xerxes ; and thus, under 
pretence of enabling the Persians to surround them 
in the strait which divided Salamis from the conti- 
nent, compelled his countrymen to an immediate 
conflict. On the Persian side were many Grecian 
vessels from its subject-states in Ionia ; but its great 
force was from Phoenicia and the neighbouring shores 
of the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians had now an 
opportunity of gratifying their ill-will against the 
Greeks, to whom they had been compelled to yield 
their earliest seats of traffic, and whom, whenever 

26 Herod, vii. 144. 

2 ? Herod, vii. 143 ; viii. 41. 



B.C. 479. SALAMIS AND PLATjEa. 91 

opportunity offered, they ever pursued with ranco- 
rous hatred. 28 But their hostility and superior num- 
bers did but afford a clearer proof of the ascendency 
of the Grecian character. They were the first to fly- 
before the onset of the Athenians, and involved the 
total defeat of the Persian fleet. 

With the ruin of his fleet Xerxes in great mea- 
sure abandoned his hopes of success. Leaving Mar- 
donius with an army of three hundred thousand 
Asiatics and fifty thousand tributary Greeks, he him- 
self returned to Sardis. And now came the time 
for the final display of Grecian courage. 29 Under 
the guidance of the Lacedaemonians, headed by Pau- 
sanias, the guardian of their young king, an army 
was collected of about forty thousand heavy-armed 
and seventy thousand light-armed troops. By this 
army Mardonius was totally defeated and slain near 
Platasa in Bceotia ; the native Persians in his army 
fighting with great valour, but having neither armour 
nor discipline to contend with the well-trained force 
of the Spartans. The Persians once broken, the 
other Asiatics made no attempt at resistance : 

" The daring Greeks deride the martial show, 
And heap their valleys with the insulting foe." 

And while the larger part of the army of Xerxes 
was thus destroyed in Bceotia, the Grecian fleet had 
already passed the iEgean, where the Persians, who 
had returned, or who had been collected on the 
shore of Asia Minor, were defeated on the very 
same day, in a great battle at Mycale. 

The attempt, therefore, of Asia to subject Greece 
ended only in the assertion of its independence and 
superiority. Like the Trojan war, this Persian con- 
flict bound together its different tribes, and gave 

28 Herod, v. 42, 46. 89 B.C. 479. 



92 THE FIVE EMPJUES. 

them yet higher grounds for glorying in their com- 
mon country. Henceforth they felt that some great 
destiny lay before it. At the commencement of the 
struggle, the unknown power of the great king was 
viewed with such apprehension, that no people had 
dared to withstand the assault of the conquerors of 
Asia, till the Athenians set the example in the plain 
of Marathon. 30 But now it was no longer doubtful 
that the ascendency rested with the natives of the 
West. It remained only to determine what tribe 
should lead forth the sons of Europe, and what state 
should be the head of that empire which should arise 
out of Greece for the subjugation of mankind 

30 Herod, vi. 112. 




PARTHENON. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Bfyrofan attempt at establishing fyt Gxetizn T&mpixt. 



SPARTANS UNFIT FOR RULE ARISTIDES ATHENS FORTI- 
FIED ALLIES RENDERED DEPENDED THENIAN AND 

SPARTAN ALLIANCE PELOPONNESIAN WAR BRASIDAS 

ALCIBIADES SICILIAN EXPEDITION ^EGOSPOTAMOS 

ATHENS TAKEN, 

On the jEgean shore a city stands — 

Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts 

And eloquence, native to famous wits, 

Or hospitable, in her sweet recess, 

City or suburban, studious walks and shades. Milton. 

The retreat of Xerxes left the rule of Greece in the 
hands of the Spartans ; and their general, Pausanias, 
headed the expedition which proceeded to free the 



/ 



94 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 1/0. 

cities of the Hellespont and of Asia Minor. After 
delivering Cyprus, he proceeded to the siege of By- 
zantium. 1 But here his conduct shewed the inevit- 
able weakness of the institutions of Lycurgus, and 
that it is little to remove the occasion, without re- 
moving the disposition, to offend. On the taking 
of Byzantium, some Persian captives of distinction 
gained over Pausanias by the hopes of wealth and 
luxury, such as he never could enjoy as a Spartan 
citizen ; and he soon offended the other Greeks, by 
what in subsequent times was their common com- 
plaint, that " strict as was the Spartan discipline at 
home, its citizens were no sooner sent to command 
in foreign countries, than they forgot not only their 
own severer rules, but even those common principles 
of duty which were regarded by the other Greeks." 

In Aristides the Athenian, who had held an in- 
ferior command under Pausanias, the allies had the 
example of a man as superior to his countrymen as 
the Spartan general fell below them. To him, there- 
lore, and to Athens, they now came, and committed to 
them the authority, which before they would yield 
to none but a Lacedaemonian. 2 So that Aristides 
gained for himself the title of the just ; and " for his 
country, what it never before possessed, the dominion 
of the sea." 3 Nor had Themistocles been of less 
national advantage to his citizens. When they re- 
turned to Attica, on the retreat of Xerxes, the Lace- 
daemonians wished to prevent the fortification of 
their city, professedly lest fortified places out of 
Peloponnesus should hereafter afford harbour to 
the Persians, but in reality out of jealousy of their 
rising power. It was by the artful delays of The- 
mistocles, who himself went as ambassador to Sparta, 
that the Lacedaemonians were prevented from en- 

1 b.c. 470. Thucydides, i. 94. 

? Thucydides, i. 95, et sq. Herod, viii. 3. 3 Diod. xi. 6. 

3 



B.C. 461. GREATNESS OF ATHENS. 9 5 

forcing their demand till the Athenians had raised 
their wails to a defensible height. The completion 
of their fortifications was followed by the improve- 
ment of their harbours, which were joined to the 
city by lofty walls ; and thus Athens gained almost 
the security of an insular power. 

The subsequent advance of its greatness, during 
the forty-five years which elapsed from the com- 
mencement of its command till the Peloponnesian 
war, was the work of those great men who succes- 
sively rose up for its direction. But if the extra- 
ordinary elasticity of the Athenian constitution led 
to the existence of great men, the fickleness and 
ingratitude of the people prevented them from pro- 
fiting as they might by their abilities. Miltiades, 
the victor of Marathon, died in prison. Aristides 
the just had been banished before the Persian war. 
The same fate befel Themistocles, the saviour of his 
country, soon after it. Cimon, son of Miltiades, 
who took the greatest lead in the formation of the 
Athenian empire, suffered for a considerable time 
under a similar sentence. He had commanded in 
various expeditions which had established the au- 
thority of the Athenians over the various allies which 
made up their confederacy. They had begun by 
establishing a common treasury at Delos, and assign- 
ing to each state a contribution of ships or money, 
with a view to defence against the Persians. But 
they soon transferred the treasury to their own city ; 
they extended the money-payment, with a view of 
increasing their own navy, and they inflicted the 
severest punishment on any states which withheld it. 
Naxos and Thasos, the first to revolt, were made an 
example to others. 

Meanwhile the energy of the people was in- 
creased by the change which had taken place in 
their domestic institutions. The dissolution of an- 



96 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 461. 

cient ties and hereditary associations, produced by 
their confinement on shipboard, and by the destruc- 
tion of their city, had given an impulse to the demo- 
cratical party, which led to the removal of that qua- 
lification which Solon had made essential to office. 
The authority of the court of Areopagus, which he 
had established as a check upon the democracy? was 
greatly diminished. At the same time the popular 
mind was swayed by Pericles, — a statesman who, 
though not superior to the temptation of being the 
public favourite, was yet thoroughly free from every 
mercenary motive, and desirous only of advancing 
the splendour and strength of Athens. So rapidly 
was this effected, that, at the commencement of the 
Peloponnesian war, the Athenian alliance embraced 
Chios, Samos, Lesbos, all the islands of the Archi- 
pelago (except Thera and Melos, which took no 
part), Corcyra, Zacynthus, the Greek colonies in 
Asia Minor and on the coasts of Thrace and Mace- 
donia, and in Greece itself, Acarnania, and the cities 
of Naupactus and Plataea. Besides these, which with 
few exceptions were subject-states, they had a party 
in many cities of the Lacedaemonian alliance — the 
democratical faction every where looking up to 
Athens as its only hope of predominance. 

This feeling, however, was kept in check by that 
national jealousy with which all the tribes of Dorian 
blood regarded their Ionian origin. This tie, and 
the love of aristocratical institutions, formed the con- 
necting bond of the Spartan alliance. It included all 
Peloponnesus except Achaia and Argos, which stood 
neuter — Megara, Locris, Phocis, Bceotia, the towns 
of Ambracia and Anactoriurn. and the island of Leu- 
cadia. These powerful confederacies had long eyed 
one another with suspicion, before they finally en- 
countered in the Peloponnesian. war. The wisest 
leaders on each side desired to prevent hostilities. 



B.C. 431. PELOPONNESIAN WAR. 97 

Pericles perceived that the great danger of Athens 
arose from its inordinate ambition, and that its best 
policy was, slowly to cement its empire, by gaining 
more complete command over its subject-states. On 
the other hand, the Spartan king Archidamus pointed 
out to his countrymen that they had no means of 
aggression except to ravage the lands of Attica, of 
which the Athenians, commanding the sea, were in- 
dependent; while they would be exposed to every 
species of injury, without power of retaliation. 

But the violence of both parties soon led them 
into a war which lasted twenty -seven years, and veri- 
fied the predictions of both leaders. 4 The Pelopon- 
nesians ravaged Attica ; but as the Athenians were 
not allowed by Pericles, then their general, to leave 
the walls and oppose them, no further injury could 
be inflicted. Meanwhile the Athenian ships ravaged 
every part of the Lacedaemonian coast. Nor did any 
means offer for injuring the Athenians till there arose 
a Spartan, who, with the firmness and self-possession 
which belonged to his countrymen, displayed a pli- 
ability of mind, an enterprise, and a readiness to avail 
himself of every resource, for which he was not in- 
debted to the discipline of Lycurgus. 5 Brasidas, such 
was his name, was sent with a small force into Thrace ; 
and after making his way through the hostile plains 
of Thessaly, he succeeded in alienating many of its 
towns from Athens. He had gained possession of 
Amphipolis, a port of great importance on the river 
Strymon, commanding the sole passage along the 
Thracian shore, when Cleon, an Athenian dema- 
gogue, who, after the death of Pericles, had gained 
great influence with the populace, was sent again&t 
him. Cleon, a tanner by trade, wholly ignorant of 
military measures, exposed his forces to certain de- 

4 b.c. 431. 

6 Thucyd. iv. 65 and following. B.C. 424. 
K 



98 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B .C. 415. 

feat by defiling in front of Amphipolis, so as to lay 
open their right or unguarded sides to the arrows of 
the enemy. Brasidas sallied forth to take advantage 
of the error, and exposing himself in the hurry of the 
attack, he fell, — a loss as irreparable to the Spartans 
as the death of Cleon was beneficial to their enemies. 

But at this time there arose a man better fitted 
to represent the peculiar combination of talent and 
volatility which belonged to the Athenian character. 
Alcibiades, son of Clinias, was an Athenian of birth 
and fortune, who possessed the still more important 
qualifications of courage, talent, and eloquence. He 
quickly became a favourite with the multitude ; and 
after various negotiations in Peloponnesus, which 
proved his great ascendency over the minds of men, 
he engaged his countrymen in an expedition against 
the island of Sicily, 6 which, if he had been allowed 
to carry his designs into execution, would probably 
have confirmed them in the empire of Greece, but 
which their suspicion and inconsistency made the 
means of their destruction. 7 Pericles had advised 
them not to risk their forces on any great attempt 
till the conclusion of the Peloponnesian war. Alci- 
biades had extensive plans for making the conquest 
of Sicily a means for that of Peloponnesus. But the 
Athenians would neither regard the prudent caution 
of the one, nor give scope to the daring designs of 
the other. They sent the greater part of their forces 
to Sicily. But they soon recalled Alcibiades, whose 
talents alone sufficed for their direction. The Syra- 
cusans, a colony of Dorian extraction, encouraged, 
when on the eve of ruin, by the presence of Gylip- 
pus, a Lacedaemonian, made head successfully against 
them, and the expedition ended in the total destruc- 
tion of their fleet and army 8 Meanwhile Alcibiades, 

6 b.c. 415. Thucyd. vi. &c. 7 Thucyd. ii. 65. 

8 b.c. 413. 



ii.C. 403. ATHENS TAKEN. 99 

returning to Greece, and flying as an exile to Sparta, 
imparted Athenian energy to its drooping counsels. 
Still, though they were deserud by many of then- 
allies, their cause might have prevailed, had not their 
inconstancy disgusted their best generals, and again 
alienated Alcibiades, whom the prevalence of the 
aristocratical party had recalled to Athens. At length 
the strength of Sparta, aided by Persian gold, enabled 
Lysander to collect an armament, by which their last 
fleet was defeated at jEgospotamos in the Helles- 
pont, and they were finally blockaded by sea and 
land. 9 After a protracted siege, in which they suf- 
fered all the miseries of famine, while they antici- 
pated the retribution of those cruelties which they 
had inflicted on other Grecian states (as Mel<H, a 
Lacedaemonian colony, where they had put all the 
male citizens to death), — the Athenians were finally 
compelled to surrender their city. But the recollec- 
tion of their services in the Persian war was not 
totally effaced. The Spartans declared that They 
would not put out one of the eyes of Greece, they 
contented themselves with the demolition of the long 
walls, which had secured Athens from their power, 
and with imposing such other conditions as esta- 
blished their own supremacy in Greece. 

9 B.C. 403. Xenophon's Hellenics, i. and il 



CHAPTER XIII. 

®t* Spiritual ittngtiom of the Grecian ^htlosopfrers. 

(VTTEMPT TO IMPROVE MAN'S CHARACTER — POETRY AND THE 

ARTS THEIR LITTLE EFFECT PLAGUE AT ATHENS — 

THE SOPHISTS — PYTHAGORAS IONIC SCHOOL — SOCRATES 

THE FOUR SCHOOLS OF DIS DISCIPLES PLATO — PHI- 
LOSOPHY FAILS OF RAISING HUMAN NATURE. 

Be assured that those things, which by his treacherous artifices he 
who is called the Tempter has caused to be uttered among the 
Greeks, have only added to my knowledge and belief in the Scrip- 
tures.— Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho, \ 69. 

The daring attempt of the Athenians to concentrate 
in their city the power of the West bad thus signally 
failed. Democracy had given them confidence and 
energy for the attempt, but wanted prudence and 
self-restraint for its execution. The oath required 
of their youth, u to regard wheat, barley, vines, and 
olives, as the only boundaries of Attica," as though 
" all the cultivated parts of the world" 1 must submit 
to their sw r ay, became henceforth an idle boast. 

But in the meantime there had arisen, in the 
heart of this adventurous republic, a set of men who 
proposed to themselves a different sort of empire 
over mankind, and who, in truth, bore a great part 
in that mighty alteration which the third empire was 
to produce on the fortunes of the world. Both by 
what they did, and by what they failed of effecting, 
the Greek philosophers carried on the designs of 
God's providence ; they diffused that universal lan- 
guage which opened a way for the triumphs of the 

1 Gillies' Greece, chap. xiii. 



ATHENIAN CIVILISATION. 101 

Gospel, and they shewed that nothing but the Gospel 
could enlighten mankind. 

The minds of the Greeks had first been cultivated 
by poetry and the arts. Pisistratus made it his ob- 
ject to render the poems of Homer popular at Athens, 
as the same method had been taken by Lycurgus to 
improve the Lacedaemonians. But the military sys- 
tem of Sparta had suited little with the elegant arts, 
which had taken full root at Athens. There Pericles 
taught the people to expend their public resources 
on adorning their city. There was this peculiar ex- 
cellence in ancient times, that works of art were not 
made subservient, as among the moderns, to the 
selfishness of private luxury, but were either em- 
ployed to give greater dignity to public law or greater 
sanctity to religious worship. At this time, accord- 
ingly, the Parthenon, the pride of ancient architec- 
ture, was built in honour of their tutelary goddess 
Minerva; and Phidias, the greatest sculptor of an- 
tiquity, honoured Athens at this period by his abode 
and his works. Its great dramatic poets, vEschylus, 
Sophocles, and Euripides, and Aristophanes, the au- 
thor of the most celebrated comedies, flourished or 
arose during the age of Pericles. The war with 
Sparta was narrated by their citizen Thucydides, the 
chief of Greek historians. But these, and a host be- 
sides them of distinguished men, did little to raise 
the moral character of the people. Their ingratitude 
to their principal leaders has been described. And a 
pestilence, which assailed Athens at the commence- 
ment of the Peloponnesian war, shewed that, in what 
constitutes man's character for good or evil, they 
were inferior to many of the most unenlightened 
barbarians. 

Thucydides, himself resident in Athens at the 
time of the plague, 2 describes its progress and con- 
2 b.c. 431-429. 
K 2 



102 THE FIVE EMPIRE J. 

sequences. Many countries were visited by it ; but 
the Athenians, driven within the narrow circuit of 
their walls by the Lacedaemonian forces, experienced 
peculiar sufferings. After mentioning the neglect, 
and the interference with the ordinary rites of 
burial, which resulted from its ravages, Tlmcydides 
observes, " that this pestilence in other particulars 
also opened the door for great corruption in the 
city : for each one ventured with more readiness on 
the indulgence of those desires which he had for- 
merly concealed, seeing such sudden transitions — 
men being one day rich, and the next departed, 
while those who had before been in poverty entered 
upon their possessions. They thought, therefore, 
that what could be immediately enjoyed, and what 
gave pleasure, was the only thing worth pursuing, 
since their lives and their estates were but the pos- 
sessions of a day. No one felt any zeal to labour 
for the sake of honour, since it was so uncertain 
whether his life would suffice for the attainment of 
his end ; but instant gratification, and whatever 
afforded the means of its attainment, came to be 
thought both honourable and useful. The fear of 
the gods and the laws of men ceased alike to be 
restraints : the former, because it seemed indifferent 
whether it was entertained or not, since the pious 
and impious were seen equally to perish ; the latter, 
because no one expected to live long enough to 
suffer retribution for his offences, seeing that a much 
greater sentence was already impending, and that it 
was natural to obtain such enjoyment as he could of 
life before its penalty was inflicted." 3 

Such was the condition of the polished Athe- 
nians, among whom the beams of natural conscience 
had been almost obscured, while no better light had 

3 Thucyd. ii. o~3. 



SOPHISTS. 103 

been given for their guidance. Their character had 
been greatly injured by the Sophists, persons who 
for hire taught eloquence and the arts of argument, 
with a perfect indifference whether they were used 
for the furtherance of truth or the propagation of 
falsehood. These men had managed to be received 
as the proper instructors of youth ; and the rising 
generation at Athens, instead of being trained in the 
simple rural habits of a former age, had in conse- 
quence become arrogant, without possessing more 
real knowledge ; and were better talkers than their 
parents, with less of purity, affection, and truth. The 
name of Sophists was derived from that of sophoi, 
or wise men, which had been given a century before 
to the first Greeks who had cultivated moral and 
political science. These wise men, of whom Thales 
and Solon were the most distinguished, had directed 
their main attention to the state of civil society; and 
certain maxims, in which they expressed the result 
of their moral reflections, are recorded as among the 
first of prose compositions. But besides these prac- 
tical inquiries, they taught their countrymen to 
think ; and out of the legends of the poets, mixed 
with the observations of life, various theories were 
formed respecting the origin of external objects. 
Hence there arose two main schools — the Ionian, 
in the country where most of the " wise men" had 
dwelt; and the Italian, of which Pythagoras, t>e 
first who took the name of philosopher (lover of 
wisdom), was the great ornament. He had lived 
long in Egypt, and studied its learning; and it 
seems probable that, either directly or indirectly, he 
obtained a measure of knowledge from the Jewish 
Scriptures. He taught what is called the doctrine 
of metempsychosis,— that the soul of man did not 
perish, but that it passed into other bodies. Re- 
moving to Crotona in Italy when in the prime oi 



l u 4 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

life, he founded a society which aimed at effecting, 
by a new course, what the institute of Lycurgus had 
failed to perform. Believing, with Aristotle, 4 that 
the multitude could never be directed but by com- 
pulsion, he associated to himself about three hundred 
of the principal citizens of Crotona and the neigh- 
bouring states, and attempted to mould them into a 
superior society, which should be governed by higher 
motives. His measures effected a great improve- 
ment in that part of Italy where he was settled ; and 
his principle of abandoning the great mass of the 
people, and aiming at the benefit of men of superior 
natures, promised to produce wide effects. Eut 
public jealousy was awakened by his designs ; some 
who were excluded from his narrow circle excited the 
many against him ; and his system was overthrown, 
and his followers persecuted, by the populace. 

The Ionian school did not produce similar ef- 
fects ; but it had its succession of sages, of whom 
Anaxagoras, the master of Pericles, was the chief. 
He taught in Athens during its greatest splendour, 
and was the first to maintain the unity of the Su- 
preme Being — a doctrine which the corruptions of 
the popular polytheism had concealed. Of the same 
school was Archelaus, among whose disciples was 
Socrates, a man who was raised up to perform what- 
ever could be performed by human efforts against 
those Sophists by whom his countrymen were de- 
luded. Socrates was the greatest man whom mere 
human nature has ever produced — a man as distin- 
guished for his private purity, his humility and affec- 
tion, as for the largeness of his views, his command 
over his fellow-creatures, his vigour and courage. 
Unlike most other teachers, he wrote nothing. He 
left no sect to bear his name. He was not anxious, 

Nicomachsean Ethics, x. 9. 



SOCRATES. 105 

like the Sophists, to be himself distinguished for 
learning or eloquence, but that all whom he knew 
should seek truth and love it. He felt himself 
charged with a mission, he knew not whence, for 
this great object. Hence he was the founder of the 
school of reflective men. Instead of vain questions 
respecting the origin of things, on which the philo- 
sophers of the Ionian and Italian schools had been 
principally occupied, he taught his disciples to look 
into their inward being, and to discern in mankind 
the reality of a moral nature. His followers de- 
scribe him as instructing men to pray for guidance 
to some unrevealed power, 5 — that " unknown God," 
whom St. Paul afterwards preached in the selfsame 
city, — and as expecting some further intimation of 
its will. He taught the certainty of a future state, 6 
and the necessity of preparing for it. Thus was he 
visited by that light which was afterwards in full 
perfection to come into the world, but of which we 
read, that from the beginning it was the " light of 
men." Hence was he the apostle of conscience. 
From this source did he derive that " sage philoso- 
phy," of which Milton declares, that it 

11 From heaven descended to the low -roofed hut 

Of Socrates : see there his tenement, 
* Whom well inspired the oracle pronounced 
Wisest of men ; from whose mouth issued forth 
Mellifluous streams, that watered all the schools 
Of Academics old and new, with those 
Surnamed Peripatetic and the sect 
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe." 

The Academics were a sect of philosophers who 
followed the teaching of Socrates's favourite dis- 
ciple, Plato. He wrote a book called the Polity, in 

5 Plato, second Alcibiades. 

6 Plato, Phaedo. 



106 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

which he mixed some things drawn from Jewish 
sources with the teaching of his master. His object 
was to set forth a perfect exhibition of what might 
be man's estate, — a pattern and model of the moral 
world. All notions of excellence which had been 
exhibited by Spartan rigour or Athenian liberty- 
were here moulded together by consummate genius 
and the deepest reflection of a meditative mind. 
Xenophon's Cyropsedia (education of Cyrus) is an 
attempt to embody the same great idea in the his- 
tory of the origin and plan of the Persian state. 
So that as Greece had before displayed what laws 
could effect, it now taught what philosophy could 
perform. The plan of educating men to do their 
duty, to love truth, to serve nature, to reverence 
God's law written in their conscience, to detect and 
follow the lingering traces of aboriginal purity and 
happiness, — all this is set forth with a fulness and 
eloquence which still continues to be the admira- 
tion of mankind. So that nothing could by natural 
means be added to what the philosophers and legis- 
lators of Greece had devised for the regeneration 
of man. 

" Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy." 

It was a fair statue, but it wanted life. An universe 
was designed in all the perfection of form, but there 
was no sun to quicken it into warmth and beauty. 
The system of the ancients continues, indeed, to be 
of unequalled use in the education of Christians: 
because while it shews what unaided man could 
effect, and calls forth the imitative energies of the 
noblest natures, it sheds thereby a clearer light on 
those truths which man cannot attain, and proves 
them to be the exclusive consequence of divine illu- 
mination. But of itself, it was utterly inefficacious 
for restoring God's image in His degenerate crea- 



FOUR SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY 107 

tures. It was without moving power. It was only 
the " sounding brass," which Daniel had made the 
symbol of the third empire. Alas for the folly of 
those who, when the Sun of righteousness has arisen, 
would still devise a " moral world," without taking 
advantage of His beams ! Greater men than they 
have tried it without success. But the blinded So- 
cialist goes forth at noonday, and thinks that his 
glimmering rushlight illuminates the world ; whereas 
when night really prevailed, not even the burning 
genius of a Socrates or Plato could disperse the 
darkness. What but the pure light of that Christian 
faith against which he shuts his eyes preserves him 
from those public and signal evils, of which the 
most enlightened age of Greece, and its wisest 
teachers, were the victims ? The genius of the Athe- 
nians did not save them from the disgrace of de- 
stroying Socrates, the wisest and best of their citi- 
zens. 7 To him, who did not regard death as a loss, 
but rather life as a duty, this was no evil ; but it 
taught how little man's reason had effected for the 
recovery of the world. 

The same lesson was taught by the subsequent 
course of philosophy. Four chief schools of opinion 
arose : that of Plato ; the Peripatetic, formed by his 
disciple Aristotle ; the Stoic ; and Epicurean. The 
first two of these took the purer and better view of 
things : Plato looking at human nature rather on 
the side of those natural feelings of right and wrong, 
which are the chief remains of God's image in the 
mind ; and Aristotle trusting chiefly to men's powers 
of reasoning, and to such truths as could be deduced 
from argument. But the Stoics and Epicureans had 
more influence upon life. The Stoic rule was a sort 
of application of the Spartan system to the inward 

7 b.c 400. 



108 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

nature — its ground man's pride and self-sufficiency; 
while the Epicureans undertook the defence of man's 
sensual tendencies, and provided a justification for 
every vice. Against these two last sects, therefore, 
the arguments of the apostle of the Gentiles were 
specially directed : " Certain philosophers of the 
Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him." 8 
And while many followers of Plato entered the early 
Church, it drew few recruits from the proud or 
sensual schools of philosophy. Yet did these spread 
abroad, and fill Athens and Greece with their doc- 
trine. So that, notwithstanding the light bestowed 
upon them in Socrates, this ingenious people be- 
came less moral and more besotted than the rest of 
the nations. Public spirit faded away among them. 
The experiment of raising man's nature had been 
tried, and tried without success. And thus ended 
the vain attempt to attain through philosophy those 
great results which the kingdom of Christ could 
alone supply. 

8 Acts xvii. 18. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Retreat of the ©en ©fjousanii— ©fjdjes atms at tfje lEmpft* 
of ©tor ce. 

STATE OF PERSIA — EZRA OLD TESTAMENT COMPLETED 

CYRUS THE YOUNGER — BATTLE OF CUNAXA PERSIAN 

TREACHERY — XENOPHON — RETURN OF GREEKS — AGESI- 

LAUS THEBES EPAMINONDAS — : IMPROVEMENT IN THE 

ART OF WAR— LEUCTRA — LACONIA RAVAGED — MANTINjEA. 

During the reign of Cleomenes, Sparta was visited by Aristagoras, the 
tyrant of Miletus, who had with him, as the Lacedaemonians say, a 
brazen tablet, on which was engraved an outline of the whole cir- 
cumference of the earth, the whole sea, and all rivers. Admitted to 
an interview with the king, Aristagoras said to him, " Cleomenes, 
marvel not at the anxiety which has brought me here. The case is 
this : that the Ionians should be slaves instead of freemen, is the 
greatest disgrace and grief to ourselves, and next to you, since you 
are the leaders of Greece. I beseech you, then, by the Grecian 
gods, to deliver your kinsmen, the Ionians, from slavery. The 
task is one which you may easily perform ; for the Barbarians are 
not warlike, while you have the highest reputation for valour." 
[He then shewed, in his map, the countries which intervene be- 
tween the Egean sea and Susa.] When the time came for giving 
an answer, Cleomenes asked Aristagoras how many days' journey 
it was from the Ionian sea to the king's dwelling. Aristagoras, 
subtle as he was in the rest of the conference, and skilful in his 
artifices, was caught by this question. If he wished to draw the 
Spartans into Asia, he ought not to have betrayed the real state of 
the case; whereas he declared it plainly, saying, " that the journey 
up would require three months." Cleomenes, cutting short what 
he was going to add, replied, "Milesian stranger, depart from 
Sparta before sunset: for it is no acceptable proposal which you 
make to the Lacedaemonians, when you wish to lead them three 
montns' journey from the sea." — Herod, v. 49, 50. 

While the Greeks were ineffectually contending 
for the possession of anticipated empire, the Persian 

L 



110 THE FIVfc EMPIRES. B.C. 458. 

power was gradually losing the vigour of youth, 
without acquiring the wisdom of age. Its great 
work — the restoration of God's chosen people — 
had long been completed. Artaxerxes, the son of 
Xerxes, called Ahasuerus in the narrative of his 
marriage with Queen Esther, 1 had sent Ezra the 
scribe to Jerusalem, 2 and afterwards appointed Ne- 
hemiah as its governor; and by their means was 
the temple and city finally restored. In their days, 3 
too, a still greater work was accomplished : the 
volume of the Old Testament was completed ; the 
prophecies of Zechariah and Malachi were added 
to what had been given before ; and thus was the 
first part of God's revelation sealed up, to wait for 
its enlargement in the latter days. 

The succession of the Persian princes was often 
interrupted — as was usual in the absolute dynasties 
of Asia — by intrigue and assassination ; and by such 
means, Darius Ochus, an illegitimate son of Arta- 
xerxes, succeeded in gaining his father's throne after 
the death of his two brothers. 4 This prince, who 
reigned during the Peloponnesian war, committed 
the satrapy of Lydia and the sea-coast of Ionia to 
Cyrus his younger son. Cyrus it was who had 
assisted the Lacedaemonians with money towards 
the end of the Peloponnesian war ; and he hoped, 
by invoking the aid of Grecian valour, to succeed 
his father on the throne of Persia. Darius died 
about the time of the taking of Athens; 5 and Cyrus 
solicited and obtained some aid in his designs from 
the Lacedaemonians. 6 But his principal reliance 
was on a body of mercenaries, who had been raised 
for him in Greece by various private adventurers ; 

1 Prideaux's Connexion, i. p. 362. 2 b.c. 458. 

3 B.C. 445. 4 B.C. 424. 

5 b.c. 404. 

6 Xenophon's Expedition of Cyrus the younger. 



B.C. 401. CUKAXA. Ill 

the chief of them Clearchus, a Spartan exile. His 
Grecian soldiers amounted altogether to about 
ten thousand men ; and in the third year after 
his father's death, 7 he set forth with them and a 
large force of Persians to attack his brother Arta- 
xerxes. 

Had Cyrus acquainted his Greek soldiers with 
the object of his expedition, they would have le- 
fused to follow him in a march of three months 
into the heart of Asia ; but, by pretending friend- 
ship to his brother, who had continued him in his 
command, and by professing that his purpose was 
to attack a neighbouring satrap, he led them on till 
to retreat was as difficult as to advance. At Cu- 
naxa, in the plains of Assyria, they were met by 
the Persian king, whose countless host fled almost 
without a blow before the well-disciplined attack of 
the Greeks. But, though victorious in their part 
of the field, they lost the assistance of Cyrus, who 
was slain while engaging hand to hand with his 
brother. They soon found their situation in the 
highest degree critical; for, on the death of Cyrus, 
they were speedily forsaken by their Persian allies ; 
and on a vast plain, shut in by unfordable rivers, — 
the Tigris on one side, and the Euphrates on the 
other, — ill supplied with provisions, and without 
horse or light troops, — a retreat in presence of the 
countless cavalry of Persia seemed almost impos- 
sible. But they were Greeks; they were strong 
in their discipline, and in the confidence that they 
were the conquering nation ; and when Artaxerxes 
demanded that they should lay down their weapons, 
they bade him "come and take them;" adding, 
" what have soldiers left when they lay down their 
arms?" 

The Persians felt the presence of their natural 
7 B.C. 401. Xen. u. s. 



112 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 400. 

victors; but, unwilling that this small body of men 
should return from the heart of Asia to proclaim 
their weakness, they resolved to make treachery 
supply the place of strength. A truce was made, 
which allowed them a safe return ; and Tissa- 
phernes, who succeeded Cyrus in his satrapy, un- 
dertook to guide them to their own country. Under 
pretence of avoiding the desert in the neighbour- 
hood of the Euphrates, they were led to the east 
of the river Tigris, and their officers, invited by 
Tissaphernes to a friendly conference, were arrested 
and slain. Thus deprived of their leaders, they 
might probably have been dispersed by the attack 
which next morning he meditated against them, had 
not their resolution been roused by Xenophon, a 
young Athenian, trained in the ennobling school 
of Socrates, who had hitherto served among them 
as a private soldier. His wisdom and courage now 
secured that retreat which his pen afterwards im- 
mortalised. Electing him and other leaders, the 
ten thousand (so they were afterwards called) re- 
treated along the eastern banks of the Tigris, till 
they reached the mountains from which it pro- 
ceeded. Here their well-ordered discipline pre- 
vailed over the hardy valour of the Carduchian 
mountaineers, whom the vast armies of Persia had 
been unable to conquer. The great king, who 
paid tribute, even when he passed from Susa to 
Ecbatana, to the inhabitants of the highland passes 
which lay between, did not attempt to follow them 
into this wild region. On emerging from it, they 
entered Armenia; and, after many hardships, ap- 
proached the south-eastern border of the Euxine 
Sea. The army was ascending a mountain, when 
the rear-guard perceived an unusual delay; and 
Xenophon pressing forward to ascertain the cause, 
heard the welcome shout, " The sea, the sea !" 



B.C. 400. RETREAT OF THE GREEKS. 113 

They soon reached the Grecian colony of Trape- 
zus ; and of ten thousand men who had left Cunaxa, 
eight thousand six hundred were found to have 
returned. 

This celebrated expedition of the younger Cyrus, 
and still more the retreat of the ten thousand, re- 
vealed the weakness of Persia; and Agesilaus, the 
Spartan king, who soon afterwards commanded in 
Asia Minor against Tissaphernes, thought the time 
already come for its conquest. 8 But his schemes 
were frustrated by those divisions among his coun- 
trymen, which were excited as well by Persian gold 
as by Spartan arrogance. And Lacedsemon had 
not long profited by its victory over Athens, before 
there arose against it a new enemy, by which its 
hope of dominion was finally extinguished. Thebes 
had hitherto taken but an inferior part in Grecian 
counsels, though Bceotia, of which it was the capi- 
tal, was important both in size and population. 
But under the leading of Pelopidas, and still more 
of Epaminondas, it rose to sudden though transient 
distinction. 9 Epaminondas, the greatest military 
genius whom Greece had yet known, conceived 
the project of concentrating his force, and thus 
bringing it to bear on one particular point of the 
opposing army. The success of his plan required 
the adoption of various measures, by which the 
attention of the rest of the hostile force was dis- 
tracted ; while the decision of the contest was made 
to depend on that single point in which his force 
was collected. This grand design, which Alex- 
ander afterwards practised on the great scale in 
the fields of Asia, enabled Epaminondas to gain 
the first victory which had ever been attained on 

8 Xenoph. Hellenics, iv. &c. 

9 Ibid. vi. 4, &c. Diodorus, xv. 6. 

L 2 



114 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 362. 

equal terms over the Spartan forces. 10 His success 
at Leuctra, in Bceotia, dissolved the charm which 
had heretofore enabled them to hold Peloponnesus 
in subjection; 11 he soon found himself at the head 
of the great mass of the Arcadians ; he ravaged the 
territory of Laconia, which had never before beheld 
an enemy ; and, as a lasting overthrow of their 
greatness, he restored the Messenians, whom, more 
than three centuries before, the Lacedaemonians 
had either driven into exile, or reduced to slavery. 
Finally, after another invasion of Laconia, 19 - Epami- 
nondas fell in a second great victory at Mantinaea, 
by which the strength of Sparta was finally crippled. 
But with him fell the ascendency of Thebes ; and 
the last hope expired that there should arise any 
among the petty states of Greece which should 
realise the promise of its expected empire. 

10 b.c. 371. u b.c. 369. » b.c. 3tf2. 




Alexander the Great, from an Ancient Model. 



CHAPTER XV. 

Eebdopment of tfj? Wxb Ismptve— aUxanUw tfje toat. 

PHILIP OF MACEDON — ALEXANDER — DANIEL'S PROPHECY 

INVASION OF ASIA BATTLE OF GRANICUS — ISSUS TYRE 

TAKEN — ARBELA — BACTRIA AND INDIA INVADED — ALEX- 
ANDER'S PLANS, AND DEATH. 



They drove the Mede and Bactrian from the field, 
And taught aspiring Babylon to yield. 

Rowe's Lvcan, viii. 



The time was now come when the harvest of vic- 
tory, for which there had been so long a prepara- 
tion, was finally to be reaped in the fields of Asia. 
The weakness of Persia and the strength of Greece, 
— Spartan discipline and Athenian energy, — the 
experience of Xenophon and the genius of Epami- 
nondas, were all to have their effect. During the 
ascendency of Thebes, Pelopidas, who had been 
called to arbitrate some differences in the north of 
Greece, had brought home with him as a hostage 
a younger brother of the Macedonian king, named 



1 ] 6 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 338. 

Philip.' In Thebes, under the teaching of Epami- 
nondas, this prince learnt those lessons in the arts 
both of war and peace which enabled him, when 
he afterwards succeeded to the throne of Macedon, 2 
to raise himself from the ruler of a semi-barbarous 
horde to the chief place among the Greeks. The 
Macedonians, a people of mixed origin, but go- 
verned by a Grecian family which claimed descent 
from Hercules, had hitherto exercised little influ- 
ence over their southern neighbours. But Philip, 
steadily using every method both of force and arti- 
fice, increased his own limits, and speedily gained a 
party among the Grecian states. He was opposed 
by the Athenian orator Demosthenes, who, by his 
celebrated Philippics, excited the Greeks to resist- 
ance, and long delayed the establishment of Philip's 
authority ; but this great master of eloquence did 
not gain sufficient confidence for his own motives, 
nor did sufficient public spirit prevail in his country, 
to make permanent opposition to the Macedonian 
power. Under pretence of punishing the Phocians, 
who had plundered the temple of Delphi, Philip 
obtained a place in the Amphictyonic council, 3 
which professed to represent the whole Grecian 
name ; and by a subsequent assembly at the Isth- 
mus of Corinth 4 he was appointed generalissimo 
against Persia, and every Grecian state except 
Sparta promised its contingent of troops. Mean- 
while he had introduced the Grecian discipline 
among his native subjects, and the Macedonian 
phalanx, framed on the principles of Epaminondas, 
was become the most formidable body of troops in 
the world. 

Just at this moment Philip was assassinated out 
of private revenge, and bequeathed the execution of 

1 Plutarch's Pelopidas. Diodorus, xvi. 1, &c. 

2 B.C. 359. a B.c. 338 4 b.c. 8.38. 



B.C. 3oS. ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 117 

his designs to his more celebrated son. In Alex- 
ander the Great all the energy which marked the 
Greek character was united to a power such as no 
Greek had heretofore possessed ; while the advan- 
tages of his birth gave him those habits of superi- 
ority which were so well supported by the native 
pre-eminence of his mind. His father had entrusted 
his education to the celebrated philosopher Aris- 
totle, who established an intellectual empire more 
lasting than that of his pupil ; and from him Alex- 
ander acquired that ardent love of knowledge, and 
those enlarged views of things, which raised him 
above ordinary conquerors, and made his empire so 
important a stage in the advance of civilisation. 
He was passionately fond of the Greek poets, and 
anxious to display all the characteristics both of 
mind and body which they had attributed to the 
heroic character. Lysimachus, the instructor of his 
earlier boyhood, gained his heart by giving him the 
name of the hero of the Iliad; 5 Alexander he called 
Achilles ; himself Phoenix, the tutor of the con- 
queror of Troy. When he was but young, a horse 
was brought to Philip's palace so high-spirited that 
none could manage it. But this animal, Bucepha- 
lus, was subdued by Alexander, who afterwards 
used it in the battles in which he conquered men. 
When his father's court was visited by some Per- 
sian ambassadors, instead of childish questions, his 
inquiries respected the civil and military state of 
the East, its distance from his native country, and 
other topics, which shewed the great schemes that 
already occupied his mind. 

And now came the fulfilment of Daniel's words, 
" A mighty king shall stand up, that shall rule with 
great dominion, and do according to his will." 6 His 

* Plutarch's Alexander. 6 Dan. xi. 3. 



118 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 334. 

conquests are thus described : " An he-goat came 
from the west on the face of the whole earth, and 
touched not the ground : and the goat had a notable 
horn between his eyes. And he came to the ram 
that had two horns [the kingdom of the Medes and 
Persians] ; and he was moved with choler against 
him, and smote the ram, and brake his two horns : 
and there was no power in the ram to stand before 
him, but he cast him down to the ground, and 
stamped upon him : and there was none that could 
deliver the ram out of his hand." 7 

It was to the rapidity here described that Alex- 
ander owed his success. Memnon, a Greek of 
talents and fidelity, was entrusted by Darius Codo- 
manus, who now governed Persia, with the com- 
mand of Asia Minor. He purposed, by Persian 
gold, to excite a general rising throughout Greece, 
so soon as Alexander's forces were withdrawn from 
it. But the young king entering Asia, in the first 
year of his reign, defeated the Persians at the pas- 
sage of the Granicus, 8 and gained the whole of Asia 
Minor. One year more, and he gained a still 
greater victory at Issus in the passes of Cilicia ; 
and, turning southward, subdued the cities of Phoe- 
nicia. By their conquest he shut out the Persians 
from intercourse with Greece, and thus secured 
himself from attack while he marched into the pro- 
vinces beyond the Euphrates. He met with little 
opposition in his progress till he summoned the for- 
tress of Tyre. The ancient city, which had been so 
long besieged by Nebuchadnezzar, he found inha- 
bited, but without fortifications ; but the new city, 
which stood upon an island half a mile i'rom the shore, 
for a long time defied his attacks. Yet to march 
inland, leaving the sea under the control of the 

7 Dan viii. 5-7. s Diod xvii. 1, &c. Arrian, i , &c. 



B.C. 331. CONQUEST OF PERSIA. 119 

enemy, who might readily work upon the mutable 
spirit of the Greeks, was impossible: with great 
labour, therefore, he made a mound from the shore, 
by which he purposed to reach this strongly forti- 
fied island : but the inhabitants issuing in their 
ships, destroyed his works when half completed. 
At length he raised a fleet from the adjoining cities, 
and, having gained the command of the sea, he cap- 
tured this mistress of the waters. Tyre has never 
since recovered its importance, and remains, as Eze- 
kiel prophesied, an isthmus, where the fisherman 
dries his nets; the mole which Alexander constructed 
having joined it permanently to the continent. Its 
fall was not owing merely to the severities with 
which at the time he visited its long resistance, but 
to the influence of the more successful rival which 
he raised against it. Egypt had hitherto been in 
great measure closed against mercantile activity ; 
but when Alexander entered it after the conquest 
of Phoenicia, he perceived, with his accustomed sa- 
gacity, what advantages were offered for commerce 
by the mouth of the Nile. In this spot, the key of 
Egypt, communicating with the East through the 
Red Sea and sending its fleets to the utmost west, 
he founded the Grecian colony which bore his name 
The result justified the foresight of Aristotle's dis- 
ciple, and Alexandria succeeded to the wealth cf 
Tyre, as it afterwards did to the literary renown of 
Athens. 

The conquest of Egypt and Phoenicia rendered 
it safe to attack the Persian monarch in the heart of 
the East. Darius had gathered an immense army 
of nine hundred thousand men ; a large part being 
drawn from the brave and hardy tribes eastward ot 
the Caspian, who, as far as the Jaxartes, acknow- 
ledged the Persian sway. With these he occupied 
a vast plain in the neighbourhood of Arbela. Alex- 



120 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 331. 

ander's army consisted but of forty thousand foot 
and seven thousand horsemen; but they were Greeks, 
and their general had been trained in the institutions 
of Epaminondas. Alexander slept soundly the night 
before the battle ; and his success was as complete 
as in his former contests. He now received the 
submission of Assyria ; he took possession of Ba- 
bylon and Persepolis ; and then followed Darius, 
who, though he had retreated through the Caspian 
gates into Bactria, found his traces still followed by 
the " leopard who had upon its back four wings of 
a fowl." 9 Darius was soon afterwards murdered 
by Bessus, satrap of Bactria, who had hoped to win 
Alexander's favour, but on whom he revenged the 
quarrel of royalty. His own conduct towards the 
captive wife and family of Darius had been gener- 
ous and kind. After subduing Bactria, and advanc- 
ing even into the Scythian desert, he turned south- 
ward to the conquest of India. He had passed the 
Indus, when, on the banks of the Hyphasis, one of 
its tributary streams, his Macedonian soldiers re- 
fused to follow him further from their native west. 
Alexander wept that his plans of conquest were 
bounded ; but immediately turning towards the 
other designs which his vast spirit had conceived, 
he prepared a fleet, which sailed down the Indus 
under the conduct of Nearchus, and explored the 
passage to the Persian gulf. There Alexander again 
met it, and proceeding to Babylon, he commenced 
the great work of cementing the empire which he 
had so hastily composed. His object was to com- 
bine together the natives of the East and West, 
and to elevate the character of his Persian subjects 
by the infusion of Grecian discipline and vigour. 
Amidst his extended plans for the discovery and 

9 Dan. vii. 6. 



b.c. 323. Alexander's death. 121 

civilisation of the East, he saw the commercial ad- 
vantages which the situation of Babylon afforded, 
and fixed upon it as the capital of his empire. His 
first care was to restore the navigation of the Eu- 
phrates, which the Persians had either hindered or 
neglected. But in the midst of his vast projects, 
and of the festivities which attended his return, 
the conqueror of Asia was suddenly arrested by the 
stroke of death. 

And now was accomplished the remainder of 
Daniel's prophecy: "The he-goat waxed very great: 
and when he was strong, the great horn was broken ; 
and for it came up four notable ones towards the 
four winds of heaven." 10 He died of a fever, in- 
creased, if not occasioned, by intemperance. Thus 
was Alexander cut off after a reign of twelve years;" 
and the great empire which he had raised so quickly 
was as speedily divided. 

10 Dan. viii. 8. " B.C. S23. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

SUcxanDcr's Successors. 

THE " FOUR NOTABLE HORNS" JEWS SEPTUAGINT — AN- 

TIOCHUS EPJPHANES — MACCABEES — ANTIOCHTJS STOPPED 
BY THE ROMANS. 

Know, therefore, when my season comes to sit 
On David's throne, it shall be like a tree 
Spreading and overshadowing all the earth. 

Milton. 

The empire of Alexander was divided among his 
generals, who strove with various fortune for the 
vacant inheritance. At length the great battle of 
Ipsus led to the establishment of four separate king- 
doms — that of Macedon, under Cassander; chat of 
Lysimachus in Thrace and Asia Minor; that of 
Ptolemy in Egypt ; and that of the East under the 
Seleucidae. The two last were not only in them- 
selves the most important, but require most notice 
in the history of the world, because to one or other 
of them the Jewish people continued to be subject. 
As the time drew nearer for that spiritual king- 
dom which was to arise out of Judaea, the influence 
of the Jewish people increased. Their intercourse 
with other nations was augmented by the settlement 
of a large colony at Alexandria, the seat of traffic, 
whence they spread into the west. Thus were the 
temporal plans of Alexander made subservient to 
the purposes of God. For the sake of this colony 



B.C. 258. TRADITIONAL INTERPRETATIONS. 123 

the Jewish Scriptures were translated into the Greek 
language, and attention was drawn to them by their 
introduction into the great library formed by King 
Ptolemy at Alexandria. This translation, called the 
Septuagint, from the number of persons [seventy- 
two] who were said to be employed upon it, made 
the Gentiles acquainted with the predictions of that 
universal empire Avhich was shortly to arise out of 
Judaea. 1 The time which Daniel had fixed for its 
approach was now at hand ; and the Jewish Church 
was able to explain the purpose and nature of these 
predictions with a clearness, which to a stranger the 
words themselves might hardly convey. Whether 
their meaning had been handed down by the pro- 
phets, or in whatever way it pleased God to enlighten 
His Church, certain it is that the books written after 
the volume of the Old Testament was finished, and 
which were called Apocrypha, or hidden, because 
not part of the Church's public teaching, shew that 
the future hopes of mankind, and the redemption 
through the Word of God, 2 were familiar to faithful 
Israelites. 3 

Among the apocryphal writings are found the 
books of Maccabees, Avhich relate how the Jews 
defended themselves against* a tyrannical prince of 
the family of the Seleucidse, named Antiochus Epi- 
phanes. 4 ' They had been kindly treated by Alex- 
ander the Great; and received from him so many 
privileges, that Josephus, the Jewish historian, refers 
them to the effect of a vision which Alexander had 
seen before he left home, and in which a person who 

• Tacitus, Hist. v. 13. 

8 Targum of Jerusalem on Gen. xlix. 18. "I wait not for 
the deliverance by Samson or Gideon, but for the redemption 
through Thy Word." 

3 Ecclesiasticus i. 5; Wisdom vii. 25 ; Baruch iii. 37. 

4 B.C. 170. 



124 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 170. 

resembled the Jpw.dh high-priest encouraged him to 
his expedition. Alexander's successors likewise had 
favoured them, and settled them in various parts of 
their dominions. 5 But Antiochus Epiphanes sought 
the destruction of their nation and worship, as 
though he would have prevented the establishment 
of that spiritual empire for which these were making 
provision. Not that Antiochus, more than worldly 
men in general, had any especial desire for the in- 
jury of the Church ; but the measures which were 
essential to its being, interfered with those worldly 
plans which he thought more important. If the 
Jewish system, which now seemed to hang by a 
thread, was done away, where would have been the 
spiritual preparation for Messiah's kingdom ? But 
what was this to the Grecian monarch, when he 
found that his empire was weakened by the preju- 
dices which it involved ? He found the Jews a se- 
parate people in the midst of the nations ; and in 
order to amalgamate them with his other subjects, 
he determined to overthrow whatever was peculiar 
in their institutions. Religion he saw to be the 
basis of them all ; and as the first step, therefore, 
in grecising the Jewish people, he required them to 
renounce their faith. This is that " vile person," 
of whom Daniel prophesies in his eleventh chapter, 
who shall not " regard the God of his fathers, nor 
the desire of women, nor regard any god ; for he 
shall magnify himself above all." 6 Against him God 
raised up a brave family, called the Maccabees, from 
the title of their first leader, who, because he broke 
in pieces all opposition, was called the Hammerer 7 
(Maccabseus). By this family the Jewish nation 
was preserved when it seemed in the utmost danger; 

5 Josephus, xii. 3. 6 Dan. xi. 37. 

7 Maccabseus was a personal name. Compare Josephus, 
xii. S, and 1 Mace. ii. 66. 



BC. 170. MACCABEES. 125 

they maintained the peculiarity of its distinctive in- 
stitutions; and thus was fulfilled the prophecy of 
God, that it should continue to be a separate people 
till the coming of .our Lord. " The sceptre shall 
not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between 
his feet, until Shiloh come." 8 

The predictions of the prophet Daniel concern- 
ing Antiochus Epiphanes, and the Jews who con- 
tended for the preservation of their Church and 
nation, have probably a further meaning, and de- 
scribe the fate of Christ's Church and its enemies in 
after-times. Antiochus is but a type of every carnal 
ruler who sacrifices the Church because he finds it 
in his way in the attainment of earthly greatness. 
Yet these predictions depict exactly the conduct of 
this tyrannous king, and of the valiant Maccabees : 
" Arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pol- 
lute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away 
the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomi- 
nation that maketh desolate. And such as do wick- 
edly against the covenant shall he corrupt by flatte- 
ries: but the people that do know their God shall be 
strong, and do exploits." 9 And one remarkable cir- 
cumstance in the king's life is set forth in the eame 
chapter; a circumstance which marks the introduc- 
tion into, the East of that fourth great empire which 
was shortly to become predominant. 10 Antiochus 
invaded Egypt, and, by adding it to his other terri- 
tories, would have increased his power of crushing 
the Jews. But at that moment, says Daniel, " the 
ships of Chittim," i. e. of Europe, " shall come 
against him ; therefore he shall be grieved and re- 
turn." 11 This return was occasioned by the threats 
of certain Roman ambassadors, who landing from 
their ships, met him close to Alexandria in Egypt. 

8 Gen. xlix. 10 9 Dan. xi. 31,32. 

10 B.C. 168. J1 Dan. xi. 30. 



126 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 168. 

The strength and pride of that fourth iron empire 
was seen in its ambassador. King Antiochus, who 
had been at Rome, knew and spoke to him as a 
friend. " No private friendship till our business is 
completed," said the ambassador, and gave him cer- 
tain letters which he brought from Rome, requiring 
him to quit Egypt. " I will consider of them," said 
the king, when he had read them, "and give an 
answer." The Roman, drawing a circle round the 
king with his staff in the sandy soil, said, " Before 
you quit this circle, you shall give me my answer to 
the Roman senate." The king replied that he would 
obey its wishes. 12 And thus appears upon the scene 
that fourth empire of which Daniel had spoken : 
" A fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong 
exceedingly ; and it had great iron teeth : it devoured 
and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with 
the feet of it : and it was diverse from all the beasts 
that were before it." 13 

12 Livy, xlv. 12, 13 Dan. vil 7. 




CHAPTER XVII. 

Utoman, or JFourti) &xtat ®mpixt. 



EARLY CONSTITUTION — PATRICIANS — PLEBEIANS — INVASION 
OF GAUX PUNIC WARS HANNIBAL — WARS WITH ALEX- 
ANDER'S SUCCESSORS ROMAN CHARACTER IMPAIRED 

GRACCHI — MARIUS — SYLLA POMPEY — JULIUS CAESAR — 

AUGUSTUS — UNIVERSAL EMPIRE PEACE THROUGHOUT 

THE ROMAN WORLD. 

The Persians at one time acquired great power and dominion ; but 
as often as they ventured to pass the limits of Asia, not only their 
empire but their existence was endangered. The Lacedaemonians 
having contended long for the mastery of Greece, could scarcely 
retain it without dispute for twelve years. The Macedonians ruled 
Europe from the Adriatic to the Danube ; and afrerwards, having 
overthrown the Persians, acquired the empire of Asia. Yet even 
they, though their power seemed to be most extensive and matured, 
left the larger part of the world wholly unsubdued. For Sicily, and 



] 28 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

Sardinia, and Libya, they never ventured to attack; and with the 
most warlike nations of western Europe they were scarcely ac- 
quainted. But the Romans, having reduced not a part, but well 
nigh the whole of the inhabited earth, have acquired a power such 
as their contemporaries may envy, and their successors can never 
surpass.— Polybius, i. 2. 

The Roman empire was diverse from all that went 
before it ; because, while they were governed by 
kings, it had grown up under comparatively free in- 
stitutions, and under a council of elders called the 
senate. The other empires had belonged to power- 
ful nations, but this to a great city, " which reigned 
over the kings of the earth." 1 

The city of Rome had been built seven hundred 
and fifty-three years before Christ, a little previous 
to the time when the ten tribes were carried captive 
by Shalmanezer. The fables which prevailed re- 
specting its origin shew an early anticipation of its 
future greatness. A head, 2 we are told, was found 
in digging its foundations, in token that it should 
be the head of the world ; and a wolf, which suckled 
its founder Romulus, prefigured the fierce and con- 
quering character of its citizens. Tts early govern- 
ment was kingly ; and seven persons are named as 
having in succession worn the crown — Romulus, 
Nuraa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Martius, 
Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius, and Tarquinius 
Superbus. 

Servius Tullius had afterwards the character of 
having devised institutions somewhat resembling 
those of Solon, 3 by which the different classes of 
citizens were to be united, and a measure of power 
placed in the hands of the people. But his mea- 
sures were undone by his successor Tarquinius Su- 

1 Rev. xvii. 18. 

2 Livy, i. 5t> ; Dionysius, iv. The early prevalence of the 
story of the wolf is shewn by the antiquity of its statue. 

3 Livy, i. 42, &c. 



B.C. 390. INTERNAL STRUGGLES. 129 

perbus (the Proud), whose tyranny made the kingly 
name hateful to the Romans. Yet his oppressions 
might have been borne in silence, had not the insult 
offered by his son Sextus to Lucretia, the wife of 
Collatinus, given occasion to an outbreak of popular 
feeling. More susceptible of insults than of injuries, 
the people rose under Brutus ; and after banishing 
the Tarquins, declared that the name of king should 
never again be endured at Rome. Two consuls 
were appointed, to whom the executive part of the 
kingly office was yearly committed ; for times of 
great emergency a dictator was named, who pos- 
sessed likewise for a season that legislative power 
which belonged in common to the senate and the 
people. But soon after the expulsion of the kings, 
it became matter of fierce dispute, of what class the 
assembly of the people should be composed. The 
Patricians, or descendants of those who had fol- 
lowed Romulus, refused to admit the Plebeians, or 
subsequent settlers, to any share in the government. 
The absence of political power involved the suf- 
ferance of personal injury, until the Plebeians, by 
threatening a total secession from Rome, obtained 
their own magistrates, the tribunes, as defenders of 
their rights. Under their guidance they advanced 
from step to step, till they gradually gained admis- 
sion to all the privileges of the old inhabitants. 

Meanwhile Rome was winning its way to power 
over its neighbours ; though it received a rude 
shock when a tribe of Gauls from the north of Italy 
seized and burned the city, 4 and remained for some 
time masters of all but the capital. They were 
driven back by Camillus ; or, as the more accurate 
Polybius tells us, 5 retreated voluntarily on hearing 
that their own country was invaded by the Veneti. 
And before their next incursion, the Romans had 
4 b.c. 390. 6 Polyb. ii. 18. 



130 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 3C0. 

so completely united the various Latin tribes as to 
be secure from their attacks. In the first five cen- 
turies after the founding of their city, all the south- 
ern nations of Italy had submitted to their influ- 
ence, while their domestic disputes were allayed 
by the admission of the plebeians to every office. 
Rome still continued to be an aristocratic state ; 
for the senate and consuls possessed much of the 
legislative, and almost all the executive, power; 
and the principle of Solon's institution was strictly 
followed, by which a qualification was required for 
office ; but no distinction of races divided the state, 
and the jealousy had passed away between the first 
settlers and those who had risen up around them. 

At this period Rome came into collision with a 
rival republic, which long disputed with it the em- 
pire of the world. Carthage, on the southern shore 
of the Mediterranean, of earlier origin than Rome, 
of greater wealth, of more extended alliances, — was 
the only state which promised to check its rising 
greatness ; and these two commonwealths seemed 
set over against one another in order to determine 
whether the race of Japheth or the family of Ham 
should possess the empire of the west. Like its 
Phoenician parent, Carthage had found that the in- 
habitants of Italy did not admit of its ascendency ; 
and an early treaty with Rome shews not only its 
commercial greatness, but the strength and hardi- 
hood of the Italians. 6 But in Spain Carthage had 
acquired immense influence ; she ruled the north of 
Africa and the islands of the Mediterranean ; and it 
was obvious that nothing but the power of Rome 
could prevent her from gaining the mastery over 
the European nations. 

In the first Punic war — so called from the Latin 
name given to the Carthaginians from their Phceni- 
6 b.c. 508. Polyb. iii. 22. 



B.C. 216. UANNIBAL. 131 

cian descent — Sicily was the prize for which the 
two cities contended ; 7 and Rome, after obtaining 
the dominion of the sea, prevailed over her rival. 
Hence a deep hostility in the breasts of the Cartha- 
ginians. Amilchar, their most celebrated general, 
passed into Spain, and spent nine years in strength- 
ening and extending the Carthaginian power in that 
country, that he might afterwards turn the force 
thus gained against Italy. On his death, his son 
Hannibal, whom he had solemnly pledged to eternal 
hatred against the Romans, succeeded to his forces 
and his enterprise. After completing his designs 
in Spain, Hannibal led the large army, which he 
had collected there or brought from Africa, across 
the Pyrenees into Gaul. s Advancing for some dis- 
tance up the Rhone, he marched by unknown routes 
across the Alps, till, by the pass of the Little St. 
Bernard, he entered Italy. To lead a large army, 
encum bered with cavalry and elephants, across 
these hitherto unexplored mountains, was an attempt 
which it required all the daring of this extraordi- 
nary man to conceive, and all his sagacity to exe- 
cute. Arriving among the Gauls of Lornbardy, 
whom the Romans had imperfectly subdued in the 
interval since the first Punic war, he reinforced his 
army ; and falling upon the plains of Italy, com- 
pelled the Romans, who had heretofore fought for 
empire, to contend for existence. He defeated them 
in three great battles: the two first, — one on the 
river Trebia, a tributary to the Po ; the other near 
the lake Thrasimene, in Tuscany, — made all the 
north of Italy his own ; while his victory at Cannae, 
in Apulia, where the Romans lost above fifty thou- 
sand men, opened to him the rich territory of Cam- 
pania. With the exception of the Latins, who were 

7 B.C. 264-. Polybius, i. 16, &c. 

8 B.C. 218. Polybius, iii. 33, &c. Livy, xxi. 21, &c. 



132 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 216. 

by this time thoroughly united to them, all the Ita- 
lian nations seemed disposed to throw off the Roman 
yoke ; and Hannibal grew so powerful, that at one 
time he even appeared under the walls of their city. 
But the Romans lost nothing of their ancient con- 
fidence. While Hannibal was encamped before their 
gates, the land which he occupied was sold by pub- 
lic auction in their city. They continued to press 
the war in Spain, as well as in Italy; while the 
Carthaginians, who were wanting in energy and 
public spirit, made but feeble efforts to aid their 
invincible general. He endeavoured, indeed, to 
interest Philip, king of Macedon, in his cause ; but 
as yet foreign princes felt no dread of the Roman 
power, nor saw any reason to expect that it would 
extend beyond the limits of Italy, while they pro- 
bably looked with more jealousy on the commercial 
greatness of Carthage. Hannibal, therefore, had 
no hope of assistance, save from his brother As- 
drubal, who followed his steps out of Spain, and 
marched across the Alps with a large army. But 
this army was totally destroyed by the Romans near 
the river Metaurus ; while Spain, hitherto the great 
arsenal of the Carthaginians, was lost to them by 
the successes of Scipio. For now was a man rising 
up among the Romans, who, backed by the native 
hardihood of his countrymen, was able to cope even 
with the genius of Hannibal. This was Publius 
Cornelius Scipio, for whom the successful invasion 
of Africa gained the name of Africanus. Having 
made acquaintance in Spain with a Numidian chief 
named Masinissa, he crossed over from Sicily, 
against the advice of the older senators, and at- 
tacked the Carthaginians under their own walls. 
As they had neglected to dispute his passage, not- 
withstanding the strength of their fleet, so still less 
could they make any effectual resistance to him in 



b.c. 201. war with Alexander's successors. 133 

the field. They had no resource, therefore, but to 
recall Hannibal; and thus, after maintaining his 
ground in Italy for fifteen years, was Hannibal at 
length summoned to defend his native country, 
alleging that the fortune of Rome prevailed over 
his wisest efforts. But his soldiers had been weak- 
ened by long service, and were unable to make head 
against Roman energy now that it was directed by 
Scipio. The two armies met at Zama : 9 for the first 
and only time was Hannibal defeated, and his discom- 
fiture decided the fate of the second Punic war. As 
the Phoenicians never came into collision with the 
Greeks without feeling their inferiority, so was Car- 
thage compelled to yield to the ascendency of Rome. 

The contest with Carthage had long been waged 
with doubtful or inconsiderable success. "It is a 
relief to myself," says the Roman historian Livy, 
" as though individually I had been a partaker in 
its labours and dangers, to have reached the con- 
clusion of the Punic war." But this enemy once 
removed, the Roman arms spread like an unresisted 
torrent over the earth. In the ten years which 
followed, the plan and order of the coming empire 
was, as it were, sketched in outline upon the map 
of the world; and the most distant nations heard 
the voice- of that fourth monster which was to rule 
over the earth. 

The kingdoms which at this time were supposed 
to be the most powerful were Macedonia, Syria, 
and Egypt. They possessed the remains of Alex- 
ander's empire: for the rebellion of the Parthians 
had withdrawn its eastern parts from all intercourse 
with the western world ; and in Greece two inde- 
pendent states had grown to power, — the once-bar- 
barous Etolians, and the free cities of Achaia. 
Syria, or the kingdom of Antiochus, was the largest 
' b.c. 201. 

N 



134 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B .C. 197 

of these monarchies, for it embraced all Asia Mi- 
nor ; Macedonia was the most warlike. With it the 
Romans first came into collision. Philip's alliance 
with Hannibal was the pretext ; the true reason for 
the war was, that the chiefs of this military repub- 
lic thirsted for that universal control, which their 
greater conduct, and the vigour of their followers 
soon achieved for them. Thus did God's provi- 
dence lead them on to the accomplishment of that 
which at first sight must have seemed beyond the 
reach of expectation. It was at Cynocephalse, in 
Thessaly, four years after the battle of Zama, that 
the Romans matched themselves against the Mace- 
donian phalanx, which had heretofore proved invin- 
cible. 9 But Philip, king of Macedon, though he 
inherited the institutions, had not succeeded to 
the genius of Alexander ; and that military system, 
which had been irresistible against the undisci- 
plined Persians, yielded in its turn to the legions 
of Rome. The Macedonian phalanx, which by its 
long spears, its compact order, and its great weight, 
had carried all before it, was liable to be thrown 
into confusion by a sudden attack on the sides. 
This the Roman general, Quintius Flamininus, soon 
discovered; and not being opposed by the ready 
resources of a practised leader, he readily availed 
himself of the defect. For the first time the Ma- 
cedonians were defeated in the open field. They 
learned the lesson which Sparta had been taught at 
Leuctra, that in the practical arts the best systems 
fail of their effect, when that spirit is extinct which 
had animated their founders. Henceforth the sci- 
ence of war assumed a new appearance ; the maxims 
of Alexander were forgotten, and Grecian yielded 
to Roman tactics. 

But, to complete this change in the drama of 
9 b.c. 197. Livy, xxxiii. 8. Polyb. xvii. 



B.C. 191. ROMANS ENTEB ASIA. 135 

the world, Antioclms must be as effectually hum- 
bled as the king of Macedon. Encouraged by the 
presence and advice of Hannibal, whom Roman jea- 
lousy had driven away from Carthage, the king of 
Syria collected his forces, and crossed into Greece. 10 
Already were the leaders of the republic beginning 
to read in clear characters their future destiny. 
When the consul xAcilius Glabrio was encouraging 
his soldiers, he bade them remember, that, this con- 
quest achieved, those richest realms which extended 
to the rising of the sun would be laid open to the 
power of the republic : " What will hinder but 
that our rule should reach from Gades to the Red 
Sea, that furthest bound of earth, and that, next 
after the gods, all the human race should reverence 
the name of Roman?" 11 Antiochus had taken post at 
the very place where Leonidas had resisted Xerxes, 
and had hoped that the straits of Thermopylae 
would stop that tide of war which was now flow- 
ing from the west. But he was soon driven from 
his position ; and at Magnesia, on the Sipylus, his 
vast army, which united the density of the Mace- 
donian phalanx with the numbers and variety of 
a Persian host, was irretrievably routed. Thus did 
the representative of the two preceding empires 
yield to the power of Rome. Antiochus was com- 
pelled to give up all Asia Minor as the price of 
peace ; and henceforth the Syrian princes under- 
stood, as might be seen afterwards from the sub- 
missive conduct of Epiphanes, recorded in the last 
chapter, 12 that they held their crowns at the plea- 
sure of the republic. The Romans were ever after- 
wards received as the sovereign arbitrators of every 
dispute both in Asia Minor and in Greece. At 
first, however, they were content to extend their 

10 B.C. ID I. Livv, zxwl » Livy, xxxvi. 17. 

12 V«de p. J'J6. 



136 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B .C. 146., 

influence without enlarging their dominions ; and 
while they were viewed as formidable neighbours 
by the kings of Macedon and the East, they entered 
into friendly alliance with the smaller states, — Per- 
gamus, which was ruled by Attalus ; and Rhodes, 
which had become the chief emporium of Grecian 
commerce. But in a few years their designs be- 
came more manifest. Perseus, son of Philip king 
of Macedon, was defeated and dethroned in the 
second Macedonian war ; 13 and after being left for 
a time in independence, Macedon itself was reduced 
to a Roman province. Syria and Egypt, too weak 
to excite jealousy, were allowed for a season to re- 
tain nominal freedom ; but at the same time Corinth 
and Carthage were destroyed ; 14 and Greece, which 
had hitherto been allowed the show of liberty, be- 
came dependent. Spain likewise was conquered ; 
while the kingdom of the friendly Attalus was 
gained by inheritance. 

And thus that spectacle was exhibited which 
Daniel had long before discerned with the eye of 
prophecy. To " devour," 15 to " tread down," and 
to "break in pieces," was exactly Rome's office 
among the nations. Every thing must bend and 
yield to the iron sceptre of its sway. Beforetime 
the aspect of the world had been diversified. There 
were republics in Europe, and monarchies in Asia ; 
the East had her cavalry, the West her foot-sol- 
diers ; some cities were enriched by commerce, 
others distinguished for arts and arms. But now 
all was frozen up in the cold uniformity of this 
iron empire. The old forms, whether of empire or 
freedom, were trampled under foot and forgotten. 
The mistress of the world sent forth her praetors 
and proconsuls to rule instead of kings ; she spread 

13 b.c. 168. Livy, xliv. &c u b.c. 146. 

15 Dan. vii. 23. 



Be 146. THE IRON EMPIRE. 137 

abroad her colonies to be a model and rule for 
cities ; she imposed her laws and customs on na- 
tions the most dissimilar ; and so " dreadful and 
terrible" was she, that none might gainsay her. 
Vast roads, uniform and unbending, were the 
tracks which she made for herself through the 
world, that so the most inaccessible countries might 
be laid open to her armies; and in making them, 
she hewed through mountains and filled up valleys, 
as though the earth was as subject to her as its 
inhabitants. 

Nor was the private character of her citizens less 
stern and masterful than their public deeds. To ail 
that refines and humanises life, to the arts and lite- 
rature, they were indifferent ; and of those Latin 
writers who rose up after the fall of their republic, 
the most distinguished were formed on Greek mo- 
dels, and had little that was Roman about them 
except the name. Every thing was swallowed up by 
the desire of pre-eminence : they were neither kindly 
nor generous ; toward strangers they were proud, 
overbearing, and intolerant; among themselves fierce, 
cruel, and relentless. Their meanest officers behaved 
with arrogance and insolence to the greatest princes 
of the earth, and took pleasure in shewing their con- 
tempt for the manners and feelings of other nations. 

But now a great change befel the mistress of the 
world. Without abandoning her pride and fierce- 
ness, she began to lose those virtues which had ori- 
ginally given her power to display them. The sub- 
jugation of these rich and extended provinces was 
fatal to the conquerors. 16 The ascendency of the 
Romans had resulted from their extraordinary re- 
verence for those natural principles of right which, 
being derived from the early notions of men's duty 
to God, had lingered in the recollection of untutored 
16 Livy, xxxix. 7, &c. 



138 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 146. 

nations. " Among the Greeks," says their country- 
man Polybius, " though a man be bound by ten 
bonds, and twice as many witnesses, he cannot be 
induced to keep faith, if he be trusted with a single 
talent of public money ; whereas the Romans, when 
during office or embassy they have a large sum in 
their hands, are held to their duty by the mere sanc- 
tion of an oath. So that whereas among others you 
can hardly find a man who abstains from plundering 
the public, among the Romans such a crime is rarely 
heard of." 17 And this purity he attributes to their 
ancient habits of piety and respect for an unwritten 
law. 

To this cause of the greatness of the republic 
must be added another circumstance — that singular 
confidence in the genius of Rome which had led its 
senate, when the consul Varro returned almost alone 
from the defeat at Cannse, to render him public 
thanks " because he had not despaired of the re- 
public." 18 The patriotism of the Romans was not, 
like that of Sparta, the forced effect of an education 
inapplicable under the ordinary circumstances of 
life ; .it was the natural produce of the domestic vir- 
tues. With the energy of freedom was blended a 
discretion which gave its leaders confidence in them- 
selves, and an unconquerable conviction that they 
were citizens of a state destined to be the head of 
the world. To what but a divine Providence can 
we refer this conviction, when we find it harmonise 
with a prophesy which had been uttered centuries 
before in another quarter of the globe — thus realis- 
ing in Europe what had been predicted in Asia? 

But the virtues of the Roman character began 

now to be impaired. On the conquest of Greece 

the seed of public spirit was speedily corrupted by 

the Epicurean philosophy. The opportunities of 

•' Polybius, vi. 56. 18 Li v. xxii. 61. 



B.C. 116. THE ROMANS CORRUPTED. 139 

wealth, which the leading citizens derived from 
high commands, enabled them to put into effect 
what this base^system recommended. And so soon 
as those in power were seen to grow wealthy from 
their rule over the provinces, a new series of dis- 
putes convulsed the state. It was no longer be- 
tween races who aimed at equal rights, but between 
the wealthy who sought to keep, and the needy who 
strove to share their possessions. Hence the distinc- 
tion of the ancient free states — that public were pre- 
ferred to private ends — was lost. The Romans had 
treated many of their greatest men with the usual 
ingratitude of a republic ; and in none was this more 
evidenced than in the distinguished family of the 
Scipios. Africanus died in voluntary exile, flying 
from the persecution of the tribunes of the people ; 
and his brother, Scipio Asiaticus, who had earned 
his sirname by the great victory over Antiochus at 
Magnesia, was condemned on a groundless charge 
of peculation. But the popular corruption shewed 
itself in new forms. The worship of Bacchus had 
been introduced from Greece, and was carried on 
in several assemblies during the night, with every 
species of debauchery. So many were infected with 
this pollution, that the sect seemed in a short time 
" to be in itself a new people ;" 19 and above 7000 
men and women were found by the senate to be in- 
volved in its guilt. This form of degeneracy was 
indeed stopped by the punishment of the offenders ; 
but it was only a sample of the ruinous confusion 
which was setting in like a flood upon the republic. 
The history of Rome, from the establishment of its 
foreign power till it sank under the dominion of the 
Caesars, is but a catalogue of conspiracies, seditions, 
and civil wars ; and the inward spectacle of this 
fourth kingdom almost resembles the confusion of 
19 Livy, xxxix. 13. 



140 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B .C. 133. 

Babel, when the first project of universal empire 
was discomfited by God. 

The earliest of these civil dissensions was excited 
by two brothers, named Tiberius 20 and Caius Grac- 
chus, 21 who successively demanded a division of those 
vast spoils which had of late years been acquired by 
Rome. Their project of an agrarian law was evaded 
by the senate, and they perished themselves in the 
disturbances which they occasioned ; but they were 
able to commit the judicial power to the knights, a 
body whom they aimed at rendering a counterpoise 
to the senate. 

The Gracchi were soon followed by a demagogue 
of a different class in Marius, 22 the conqueror of Ju- 
gurtha, — a successful general, whose services were 
thought so needful that he was four times elected 
consul, when Rome was threatened by the barbarian 
Cimbri, 23 whose path had been marked by devasta- 
tion from the Euxine to the Po. Marius struck a 
powerful blow at the ancient system, by admitting 
the lowest class of the people to the regular service 
of the legions. In such a turbulent state as Rome 
then presented, political power must soon follow mi- 
litary strength. Marius set the example of occupy- 
ing the city by force, as though it had been a hostile 
capital : and indulged his hatred by the massacre of 
his opponents. But the lesson which he had given 
to others was soon read to himself. Sylla, a warm 
adherent of the aristocratical party, returned shortly 
from the East with the army which had triumphed 
over Mithridates, 24 king of Pontus, the last and 
greatest foreign enemy of the republic. With more 
power than Marius, he made a proscription of his 
opponents — set forth, that is, a list of those whom 

20 bc 133. 21 b.c. 121. Plutarch's Gracchi. 

23 Plutarch's lives of Marius, Sylla. Ceesar, &c. b.c. 106. 

* B.C. 101. S4 B.C. 82. 



B.C. 60. TRIUMVIRATE. 141 

he desired to destroy; and after being appointed 
perpetual dictator, and abolishing the tribunitial 
power, he gave to the party of the senate what 
seemed a lasting authority. Lucullus, Pompey, 
Crassus, the distinguished men of the next genera- 
tion, arose out of his party. But Pompey, finding 
the senate unwilling to gratify those exorbitant de- 
mands to which he thought that his military suc- 
cesses entitled him, restored the tribunitial power, 25 
and by its aid gained an excess of greatness incon- 
sistent with the situation of a private citizen. The 
senate at this time was not wanting in great men ; 
and its authority was especially maintained by Ci- 
cero, the first Roman who had risen without mili- 
tary talents to first-rate distinction. But Cicero 
had neither influence nor strength of character to 
wrestle with the military leaders of his day. After 
a temporary banishment, he submitted without op- 
position to what was called the triumvirate. 26 This 
was a combination of three persons, Pompey, Cras- 
sus, and Caesar, who had sufficient power to rule the 
senate at their will, and to apportion among them- 
selves and their followers the offices of government. 
Pompey had now returned from the East, where he 
had. finally destroyed the kingdom of Mithridates, 
and decided respecting the destiny of its various 
states. It was at this time that he was called in by 
Hyrcanus, one of the Maccabean princes, who was 
besieging his brother in Jerusalem, and by Pompey's 
assistance gained the government. The heroic days 
of the Maccabees were now passed ; and Antipater 
the Idumean, father of Herod, who was at present 
an adherent of Hyrcanus, was shortly afterwards 
made ruler of Judea by the Romans. Pompey had 
administered the affairs of the East with all the au- 
thority of an absolute monarch ; but the designs of 

25 fl.C 70. ™ B.C. fiO. 



142 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 50. 

the triumvirate were found to turn exclusively to 
Caesar's profit. Better fitted than Pompey for a 
popular leader, the reputed successor of the party of 
Marius, Caesar gained the command of the province 
of Gaul, and there and in Britain he trained his 
army to conquests, of which his own country was 
the last victim. Pompey at length found it neces- 
sary 27 to throw himself upon the senate ; and Cras- 
sus, their associate, having perished in an expedition 
against Parthia, the empire of the world was con- 
tested between these two leaders. With Pompey 
sided the senate and the aristocratical party ; men 
of broken fortunes and of turbulent minds wished 
success to Caesar. They met in the plains of Phar- 
salia ; 28 and the legions of Caesar, trained in the 
hardships of the Gallic war, proved too powerful 
for the troops which Pompey had collected from 
the more tranquil portions of the empire. 

Caesar had now gained the summit of his ambi- 
tion, but not with any purpose of restoring the an- 
cient system, or resigning, as Sylla had done, his 
unconstitutional authority. Democracy had now 
run its course, and ended, according to its natural 
progress, in absolute power. No other system could 
longer suffice for the government of Rome. Even 
when Caesar had fallen by the daggers of Brutus 
and Cassius, 29 a new triumvirate was speedily formed 
by Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus. Hence fresh 
proscriptions, and a new war for the empire of the 
world. At length Antony, being defeated in the 
battle of Actium, Augustus succeeded to the su- 
preme command, 30 though out of respect for ancient 
prejudices he declined the name of king, and adopted 
the title of emperor, which it had been usual for 
every Roman general to bear when he returned vic- 
torious from a field of battle. 

27 B.C. 50. ™ b.c. 48. ^ b.c. H. &7 B.C. 31. 



B.C. 31. THE CRISIS OF HISTORY. 143 

And now the world began to present a very dif- 
ferent appearance from any thing which had been 
seen within the recollection of man. None of the 
three preceding empires had filled the earth so com- 
pletely as did the Roman. The power of none 
seemed to be so well compacted. The Romans, 
who had never been a year at peace since their city 
was built, were now free from all enemies ; and the 
temple of Janus, which it was their custom to open 
whenever they went to war, was for the first time 
permanently closed. Mankind began to look witli 
wonder on what should follow this new state of 
things. A contemporary heathen historian 31 ex- 
presses his surprise at seeing the whole destiny of 
the tribes of men thus gathered into a single chan- 
nel, and ready to expand itself into some unwonted 
form. 

The general extension of the Greek language 
throughout the East co-operated with this universal 
outspread of the Roman power. The truths which 
had been gathered from the Old Testament worked 
among the heathen. An universal empire — a reign 
of peace — the deliverance of mankind, — these they 
knew were expected. Hence the Roman poet Vir- 
gil predicts the birth of one who should bring back 
the auspicious era of ancient innocence and plenty. 

" The jarring nations He in peace shall bind, 
And with paternal virtues rule mankind ; 
Unbidden earth shall wreathing ivy bring, 
And fragrant herbs (the promises of spring), 
As her first offerings to her infant King ; 
The goats with strutting dugs shall homeward speed, 
And lowing herds secure from lions feed ; 
His cradle shall with rising flowers be crowned ; 
The serpent's brood shall die; the sacred ground 
Shall weeds and poisonous plants refuse to bear ; 
Each common bush shall Syrian roses wear. 

31 Polybius, i. 3. 



144 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 31. 

Yet of old fraud some footsteps shall remain, 
The merchant still shall plough the deep for gain ; 
Great cities shall with walls be compass'd round, 
And sharpened shares shall vex the fruitful ground. 

But when to ripen'd manhood he shall grow, 
The greedy sailor shall the seas forego ; 
No boat shall cut the waves for foreign ware, 
For every soil shall every product bear." 32 

Such were men's expectations ; but, as has hap- 
pened in all times, they expected from the world 
that which was to be manifested in the Church. 
For they knew not the full glory of that prophecy 
which it has been given to us to understand : " the 
greaves of the warrior, his weapons, and his gar- 
ments rolled in blood — these shall be a burning 
and fuel of fire. For unto us a child is born, unto 
us a son is given : and the government shall be 
upon His shoulder : and His name shall be called 
Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the ever- 
lasting Father, the Prince of Peace." 33 

32 Bryden's Virgil, Eclogue iv. w Isaiah ix. 5. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

©ur iLorb's ©oming, ©ij* Ittngtiom of $?eabm. 

PROPHECIES FULFILLED OUR LORD'S BIRTH — WISE MEN 

HEROD OUR LORD AS PROPHET, PRIEST, AND KING — HIS 

EMPIRE — WHEREIN LIKE THE FOUR PRECEDING ONES 

MEANS OF ADMISSION INTO IT PROPHECIES OF ITS 

DURABILITY. 

From thence, far off, lie unto him did shew 

A little path that was both steep and long, 
Which to a goodly city led his view ; 

Whose walls and towers were builded high and strong 
Of pearl and precious stone, that earthly tongue 

Cannot describe, nor wit of man can tell ; 

Too high a ditty for my simple song : 
The city of the great King hight it well, 
Wherein eternal peace and happiness doth dwell. 

Spenser. 

For whom, then, was this mighty preparation ? 
The first part of Abraham's promise had long been 
realised ; the second was now to be fulfilled. The 
appointed years of Daniel's prophecy had run their 
course ; the desire of all nations was at hand. Jacob 
had predicted, that till he came the Jewish people 
should not cease to be a separate nation : as yet 
they continued under their own princes; but a little 
while and they must be lost, like other tribes, in the 
wide-sweeping wave of Roman power. Now, there- 
fore, was the time for that which Balaam had so 
long before declared, " there shall come a star out of 
Jacob, and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel." 

The men of this world are often unwitting in- 
o 



146 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

struments of the providence of God. In the twenty- 
ninth year of his reign, 1 Augustus Caesar issued a 
decree, " that all the world should be taxed." As 
Judaea was still under its own princes, " this taxing 
was" not "made" there till some years afterwards, 
" when Cyrenius was governor of Syria." But 
though the Jews as yet paid nothing, they were 
notwithstanding ordered to be enrolled, and an ac- 
count taken of their numbers and property. Little 
did the proud Roman think, when he was thus 
making display of his power and riches, that his 
purpose was in truth but one link in that chain 
which would lead to the establishment of an em- 
pire greater and more lasting than his own. 

Yet so it was. It had been predicted that at 
Bethlehem the Christ should be born. Now, to be 
taxed, every one went to his father's city. " Joseph," 
therefore, " went up from Galilee, out of the city ot 
Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, 
which is called Bethlehem (because he was of the 
house and lineage of David), to be taxed with 
Mary his espoused wife, being great with child* 
And so it was, that, while they were there, the 
days were accomplished that she should be de- 
livered. And she brought forth her first-born 
son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and 
laid him in a manger." 2 

Thus did "the Heir" 3 come to His inheritance: 
" the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." 4 
His birth was immediately known in a distant land ; 
"the Gentiles," it had been said, "shall come to 
Thy light; and kings to the brightness of Thy 

1 b.c. 3. The words B.C., or before Christ, mean before 
his third year : a.d., or anno Domini, i. e. in the year of our 
Lord, mean after his third year. 

2 Luke ii. 4-7. 3 Luke xx. 14. 4 1 John i. 14. 



HEROD. 147 

rising." 5 By a wonderful remembrance, and a mi- 
raculous interpretation of Balaam's prediction, some 
distinguished persons were brought from a distant 
country, and offered their gifts to theirinfant Saviour. 
" Where," they said, " is He who has been born king 
of the Jews?" Epiphany, or the manifestation of 
Christ to the Gentiles, is kept by the Church, on 
the twelfth day after the feast of the nativity, in 
memory of these " wise men," who had " seen His 
star in the east, and were come to worship Him." 6 
Thus did it please God, by some unknown means, 
to spread abroad the expectation of that spiritual 
kingdom, which He was to establish. 

Herod, who at this time was king in Judaea, 
though by adoption a Jew, yet having gained the 
throne by usurpation, was troubled at the predic- 
tions which he heard concerning this future Sove- 
reign. He was the son of Antipater, an Idumaean, 
who had been an adherent of Hyrcanus the Mac- 
cabosan prince, whom Pompey had restored ; Anti- 
pater had subsequently obtained the government 
of Judaea from Caesar, and had left it to his son 
Herod. But, though Herod had secured himself 
by marrying Mariamne, the heiress of the Macca- 
basan family, yet so conscious was he of the inse- 
curity of his power, that he put to death his own 
son, out of jealousy of the superior title to the 
throne which the boy derived from his mother. 7 
This act of cruelty accords well enough with that 
of which he was guilty in order to destroy our 
Lord, when he put to death all the children in 
Bethlehem " from two years old and under." 8 But 
Joseph, warned by God in a dream, had carried our 
Lord into Egypt ; and when he brought Him back, 

5 Is. lx. 3. 6 Matt. ii. 2. 

7 Joseph. Antiq. xvi. 17. 8 Matt. ii. 16. 



148 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

a year afterwards, on Herod's death, finding that 
Archelaus reigned in the room of his father Herod, 
he carried Him to his own city Nazareth. From 
thence, in His twelfth year, 9 our Lord went up to 
Jerusalem ; and, according to Jewish custom, was 
admitted into the temple. In the same year was 
Archelaus dethroned by the Romans, and Judaea 
made a province of their empire. Thus did " the 
sceptre depart from Judah" 10 at that very season 
when Shiloh came, to whom the gathering of the 
nations should be. 

For thirty years our Lord remained unknown 
at Nazareth. When come to the age at which the 
Jewish ministers were ordered to begin their ser- 
vice, 11 at which Joseph, the ancient preserver of 
Israel, was raised to the government of the land of 
Egypt, 12 and David to the sovereignty, our Lord 
commenced His public ministry. It lasted during 
part of three years. His words and His actions — 
the only perfect example ever given among men — 
are written in those holy gospels, which are the 
charter of the Christian's hope. At length, 13 He 
" suffered under Pontius Pilate," the governor of 
Judaea on behalf of the Roman emperor Tiberius, 
who had succeeded Augustus. For our Lord's 
example was but one of the objects for which He 
lived. He was the substance of those things of which 
the law had " but the shadow." Whatsoever had 
been foretold or foredone had its reality in Him. 
He was the true paschal Lamb, whose blood was 
sprinkled for mankind's preservation. Even in His 
life, He " came not to be ministered unto, but to 
minister ;" 14 but it was in His death that He " gave 
His life a ransom instead of many." His sacrifice 

9 a.o. 10. 10 Gen. xlix. 10. " Numb. iv. 3. 

12 Gen. xli. id. lz a.d. 31. 14 Matt, xx 28. 



OUR LORD S DEATH. 149 

upon the cross on Good Friday, the season of the 
Jewish passover, was the real sin-offering, " which 
taketh away the sin of the world." *'-> The shedding 
of His blood was the only expiatory sacrifice. 6 

But, besides giving an example and making an 
atonement, our Lord came to establish an empire. 
Not only was He Prophet and Priest, but King. 
This He had begun to proclaim from the time that 
His forerunner, John the Baptist, was cast into 
prison. " From that time Jesus began to preach, 
and to say, Repent ; for the kingdom of heaven is at 
hand." 17 This is that kingdom of which Daniel 
speaks as rising in the time of the fourth, or Roman 
empire : " In the days of these kings shall the God 
of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be 
destroyed ; and the kingdom shall not be left to 
other people, but it shall break in pieces and con- 
sume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for 
ever." 18 Three things are mentioned as distin- 
guishing it : that in its rise it should be impercept- 
ible ; in its extent, unbounded ; in its duration, 
without end. And that such should be the cha- 
racter of His empire, our Lord declared in fuller 
words : it was to be a stone cut out of a mountain 
without hands. 19 " And when He was demanded 
of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should 
come, He answered them, and said, The kingdom 
of God cometh not with observation ; neither shall 
they say, Lo, here ! or lo, there ! for, behold, the 
kingdom of God is among 20 you." 21 

This is further explained in our Lord's parables. 
The gradual manner in which His empire should 

15 John i. 29. 16 Heb. x. 4, 14. V Matt. v. 17. 

18 Dan. ii. 44. 19 Dan. ii. 45. 

20 This is the marginal reading. That in the text looks to 
a further and deeper meaning of the same words. 

21 Lukexvii. 20, 21. 



150 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

arise is declared in the parable of the leaven : " The 
kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a 
woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till 
the whole was leavened." 22 His kingdom was not 
to be set up by any violent exercise of power, but 
was to grow, as knowledge or affection might spread 
silently through the hearts of a people. Thus might 
agreement extend from one family to another house- 
hold, from one nation to another people. Thus did 
the Ninevites repent as one man at the preaching of 
Jonah. And thus has Christ's kingdom ever been 
extended, by the imperceptible growth of faith in 
hearts which grace has renewed. 

But something more than this is needful to form 
a kingdom : not merely an inward spirit is required, 
but an outward form. " The greatness of the king- 
dom under the whole heaven shall be given to the 
people of the saints of the Most High." 23 Besides 
the growth of Christian faith in the hearts of men, 
the prophecy of old looked to the establishment of 
something which, like the four preceding empires, 
should be the main and central object in the world ; 
the chief spectacle which men should behold ; the 
mountain which should be seen " to fill the whole 
earth." 24 And such our Lord describes in other 
parables : " The kingdom of heaven is like unto a 
grain of mustard-seed, which indeed is the least of 
all seeds, but when it is grown is the greatest among 
herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the 
air come and lodge under the branches of it." 25 His 
kingdom, then, like those of old, is to stand forth as 
the chief thing of its time, — as filling the world, like 
those which went before it. In other places He calls 
it His Church. This name, which in its original 
means an assembly, shews that the kingdom of God 

22 Matt. ii. 33. 23 Dan. vii. 27. 

24 Dan. ii. 35. a Matt. xiii. 



KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 151 

is to be made up of a collection of individuals. And 
that these individuals were to be gathered together 
by some outward bond, He further taught in those 
parables, in which He declared that bad as well as 
good men should be found in the kingdom of God : 
" The kingdom of God is like unto a net, that was 
cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind." 26 It 
is not, therefore, mere inward faith which admits 
men into the kingdom of God here below — though 
none but the faithful profit by its blessings ; — there 
must be some outward means which unites the 
Church, like the four preceding empires, into one 
body, and admits men of all characters into God's 
earthly fold. 

It is probable that during the forty days which 
elapsed between our Lord's resurrection from the 
dead and His ascension into heaven, He gave His 
disciples more full and express instruction than they 
had before received, respecting those outward means 
by which men were to be admitted into His earthly 
kingdom. Certain it is that His very last injunc- 
tion before His departure directed their attention 
to the sacrament of baptism, as the appointed me- 
thod for gathering in disciples from all nations ; and 
no sooner had they received the gift of the Holy 
Ghost, than the Lord's supper became, in like man- 
ner, a main part of their continual worship. And 
if baptism be the means by which men are received 
into the Christian congregation, by the holy eucha- 
rist their union is renewed and strengthened. We 
read in the Prayer-book, that those "who duly 
receive " it are " thereby assured that " they " are 
very members incorporate in the mystical body of" 
Christ, " which is the blessed company of all faith- 
ful people." 27 And this accords with St. Paul's 
saying : " We being many are one body : for we 

36 Matt. xiii. 47. " 7 Communion-service. 



152 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

are all partakers of one bread." 28 By these two ordi- 
nances, therefore, properly received, do men become 
and continue members of the family of God. And 
as of old times soldiers called that a sacrament by 
which they pledged their allegiance to their leader, 
so are these two fitly called the Sacraments, be- 
cause thereby men's part in the Church is given 
and confirmed. Yet we must be careful to bear in 
mind the truth which our article declares, that the 
" sacraments be not only badges of men's profession, 
but rather " " effectual signs of grace, by the which 
God doth work invisibly in us." 29 If they mean 
something on our part, they mean something also 
on the part of God. Our Lord appointed them, not 
merely as the means whereby men might enter His 
kingdom, but also as the channels through which 
He might replenish the faithful with His grace. 

Such, then, is that kingdom which our Lord 
founded ; of which the increase was, by His spi- 
ritual presence in the hearts of His servants, given 
through the sacraments which He had ordained. 
He declared that its progress should be gradual. 
He taught that it should not interfere with worldly 
sovereignty : " My kingdom is not of this world." 
But as He had said that its rise should be imper- 
ceptible, so did He foretell that it should attain 
to all that Daniel had predicted in the extent and 
duration of its sway : " This Gospel of the kingdom 
shall be preached in all nations." The former em- 
pires did not so fill the earth that there was room 
for nothing besides. But they occupied its middle 
place; their fame went into all lands. And so 
Christ's kingdom : it is to be every where witnessed. 
Whether it is to penetrate into every abyss, we 
know not ; but it is to " cover the earth, as the 
waters cover the sea." 

29 1 Cor. x. 17. » Art. xxv. 



THE CHURCH S PERPETUITY. 



153 



And not less certain is its enduring character. 
Our Lord left eleven apostles, who were to be His 
witnesses to the end of the world. Their first act 
was to associate another, who, by that circum- 
stance, gained not more individual knowledge, but 
that office of an apostle, by which he witnessed to 
the truth. To His apostles our Lord gave His 
final pledge, " Lo, I am with you always, even unto 
the end of the world." And as He is present with 
those who execute this office, so is this office itself 
a perpetual memorial of His truth. So that where- 
soever men exercise a bishop's office throughout the 
world, they give their witness to that kingdom in 
which God has made them apostles. 




The goud Shepherd carrying back the wandeier to His Church: from an ancient 
paintiog at Rome. The earliest representations of our Lord are all enigmatical. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

W&t &postl*s. W$t £f)ttfrf) estat>u'sf)r&. 

FAITH OF THE APOSTLES — BAY OF PENTECOST — GOSPEL FIRST 

PREACHED TO JEWS GENTILE CONVERTS COUNCIL AT 

JERUSALEM TWO ORDERS OF MINISTERS BESIDES THE 

COLLEGE OF APOSTLES ST. JAMES ST. PAUL AT ATHENS 

AND ROME PASTORAL EPISTLES QUESTION WHETHER 

THE JEWISH SYSTEM WOULD CONTINUE DECIDED BY DE- 
STRUCTION OF JERUSALEM — JEWS BANISHED PALESTINE 

MEETING OF APOSTLES IN JUDjEA UNIVERSAL ESTA- 
BLISHMENT OF THE ORDER OF BISHOPS. 

Is not from hence the way that leadeth right 
To that most glorious house that glistereth bright 
With burning stars and ever-living fire, 
Whereof the keys are to thy hand behight 1 

Spenser. 

The foundations of the Church were laid by the 
Lord ; it was built up after His departure by His 
apostles. Their first act had been to complete their 
own body, by adding a twelfth witness to our Lord's 
resurrection. 1 Thus they shewed their confidence 
in the continuance of that system which they were 
called upon to administer. 

But they were still ignorant of one material fea- 
ture of the future dispensation. They believed the 
Church to be God's kingdom below ; and that in it 
were to be fulfilled the promises of the Old Testa- 
ment : but they thought it was to be built within 
the limits of the Jewish nation ; that, to be Chris- 
tians, men must first be Jews either by birth or 
1 a.d. 31. 



B.C. 45. THE GENTILES ADMITTED. 155 

adoption. When our Lord taught them that they 
were to perpetuate His Church, their question was, 
" Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the 
kingdom to Israel ?" 

Ten days after our Lord's ascension, on the 
Jewish feast of weeks, the apostles were endued 
with signal gifts of the Holy Ghost. The most 
apparent of these was that miraculous command of 
languages which aided them in extending Christ's 
universal kingdom, just as the miraculous confusion 
of tongues had defeated the universal outspread of 
the first worldly power. The descent of the Holy 
Ghost on the second of the three great Jewish 
feasts, as our Lord's crucifixion had taken place on 
the first, seemed to imply that the Mosaic system 
was henceforth to be hallowed to those higher pur- 
poses of which it was an emblem. But the apos- 
tles were soon taught by St. Peter's interview with 
the centurion Cornelius, 2 that the Gentiles also were 
to be brought into Christ's fold. And, shortly after- 
wards, it pleased God to call two more apostles, St. 
Paul and St. Barnabas, 3 who were set apart by the 
express witness of the Holy Ghost for the benefit of 
the heathen. 

The appointment of these fresh labourers to this 
specific office did not take place till above thirteen 
years after our Lord's death ; 4 and then it is that 
St. Paul and his companion, who had before been 
called teachers, are first named apostles. 5 St. Paul 
had already spent about eight years in more private 
labours, chiefly in his own country of Cilicia, 6 be- 
fore he entered upon this public sphere. His pre- 
sent mission led to a final decision respecting the 

2 a.d. 32. 3 Acts xiii. 2. 

4 a.d. 45. 5 Acts xiii. 1, xiv. 14. 

6 Acts xi. 25, xv. 41. 



156 THE FIVE EMPIRES. B.C. 46. 

admission of Gentile converts. Paul and Barnabas, 
after a short visit to Cyprus, had penetrated into 
the heart of Asia Minor, and formed Christian com- 
munities, not only from among the scattered Jews, 
but from the ignorant heathen. On their return to 
Antioch, they stated " how God had opened the door 
of faith to the Gentiles." 7 Their conduct gave of- 
fence to some Jewish brethren, who maintained that 
though it was allowable to make heathen converts, 
as had been done by St. Peter, yet that, when con- 
verted, they must conform to the Jewish law. 8 A 
question of this kind, on which the future course of 
Christ's kingdom depended, required a reference, it 
was thought, to the collective body of apostles and 
elders. With this view the two new apostles went 
up to Jerusalem. 9 The occasion was of most me- 
morable interest, not only because it so deeply 
affected the probable extent of the Christian com- 
munity, but also because this great council was 
attended apparently by the main body of the apos- 
tles, who speedily afterwards set forth on their 
several journeys, to reassemble no more. 

The decisions of this assembly were not less im- 
portant than the occasion was interesting. After 
St. Peter had called attention to the first admission 
of a Gentile convert, and " Barnabas and Paul" 
had declared by what miraculous witness it had 
pleased God to sanction their late mission, the facts 
of the case were summed up by James, bishop of 
Jerusalem, and, according to the flesh, a near kins- 
man of our Lord, to whose conclusion, that nothing 
more should be required of Gentiles save to abstain 
from doing violence to Jewish feeling, the most 
bigoted of his countrymen for the time submitted. 
7 Acts xiv. 27. 8 Acts xv. 2. 

9 A.D. 46. 



A.D. 1-100. COMMISSION OF APOSTLES. 157 

But in sending forth their decision, the apostles 
rested their authority not on arguments, which 
might be admitted or rejected according to the 
leaning of man's judgment, but on that apostolic 
commission, of which their miraculous powers were 
an apparent proof. " It seemed good to the Holy 
Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden 
than these necessary things." 10 It is on this ground 
that Christians in all ages have been guided by 
the practice of the apostles. God was pleased to 
give visible attestation that they were His messen- 
gers, and therefore that the institution which they 
founded was accordant to His will. By virtue of 
this power, they set apart the Lord's day for God's 
service instead of the seventh, or Jewish Sabbath ; 
they taught how to observe those sacraments which 
Christ had ordained ; they received children into 
the Church by baptism; they set forth the Lord's 
supper as the chiefest act of Christian worship ; 
they established two orders of ministers in the 
Church besides themselves: to the lowest, that of 
deacons, they gave the inferior service of minister- 
ing to the poor, and assisting in the congregation : 
the highest order was called at first by the name 
either of bishops or elders — the title of elder being 
a Jewish name, that of bishop the Gentile appella- 
tion for' those who were employed as overlookers of 
the people. Such ministers were placed in every 
city; but the rule of the Church remained altogether 
in the apostles themselves, or in persons whom they 
employed as their substitutes. Of this last number 
appears to have been James, the first bishop of Jeru- 
salem ; appointed probably to that office not merely 
from his own merit, but from reverence for his near 

i0 Acts xv. 28. 
p 



158 THE FIVE EMPIRES. a.D. 1-100. 

connexion with the Saviour. 11 He is often classed 
with the apostles, but he continued to be the settled 
pastor of a single city, while they separated, after the 
council of Jerusalem, for their various labours. The 
greater number travelled in Asia ; some so widely, 
that to this day the Christians of India assert that 
St. Thomas visited their country, and they were at 
all events converted by his immediate disciples. 

But the labours of the great apostle of the Gen- 
tiles form the main topic of the inspired historian. 
On taking leave of his brethren at Jerusalem, he 
travelled again into Asia Minor, and thence through 
Macedonia into Greece. Thus was he chosen to 
bear witness to the faith of the cross in the chief 
seat of Gentile learning, and to declare in the cor- 
rupted Corinth, and the contentious Athens, that 
secret after which heathen philosophy had yearned 
in vain. Standing in the midst of Mars' hill, the 

11 That St. James, our Lord's kinsman, was not one of the 
twelve, the general, though not universal, opinion of the an- 
cients (vide Burton's Lect. on Eccl. Hist, iv.), has been doubted 
by many later writers, because he is called an apostle, Gal i. 19 
(vide Tillemont, Cave, Lardner) ; yet the ancient opinion seems 
most consistent with Scripture. — 1. The notion that St. James, 
our Lord's brother, was one of the twelve, implies him to be 
the son of Alphseus ; and since Jude certainly was our Lord's 
kinsman, the same must be thought of Simon, who is twice put 
between them (Luke vi. 15, 16; Acts i. 13). Indeed, Lardner 
(vol. vi. p. 189) lays great weight on the improbability that 
three persons having the same names should occur both in the 
list of the apostles and of our Lord's brethren, and not prove to 
be the same persons. (This argument is overthrown by the great 
frequency of these names among the Jews; and, indeed, another 
James, another Simon, and another Jude, are found among the 
apostles, of whom we know for certain that they were different 
persons from our Lord's brethren.) Assuming, then, that 
James the son of Alphseus, and Simon, were both or neither of 
them our Lord's brethren, it is obvious that the former suppo- 
sition is very inconsistent with the opposition which occurs, 



A.D. 1-100. TRAVELS OF APOSTLES. 159 

seat of their chief council — the Areopagus — he 
preached to the Athenians that God whom they 
" ignorantly worshipped." Thus was the power of 
God's kingdom put in open opposition to the might 
of Satan ; and some were found who received with 
thankfulness, from a despised Jew, what Socrates 
and Plato had been unable to bestow. 

After testifying 10 our Lord's kingdom in po- 
lished Greece, St. Paul was chosen to bear the like 
witness at imperial Rome. He had ended his third 
apostolic journey by attending the feast of pentecost 
at Jerusalem. 12 Assaulted and accused by his bre- 
thren, he took advantage of his rights as a Roman 
citizen, and appealed to the emperor. The governor 
of Judaea sent him to the capital of the world. 18 
The Roman empire was no longer under the mild 
and politic Augustus, whose moderation had con- 
firmed the power which had been won by the bold- 

both before and after our Lord's death between His apostles 
and His brethren : " Neither did His brethren believe in Him" 
(John vii 5 ; Matt xii. 46). And so after our Lord's cruci- 
fixion (Acts i. 14; 1 Cor. ix. 5). The same distinction may 
clearly be traced in eccl. hist., when the brethren of the Lord 
are spoken of as distinct from His apostles, Eus. iii. 1 1 (where 
Simon the son of Cleopas comes forward as a distinct man 
from Simon the apostle, as indeed Cave allows). Now if three 
of our Lord's four cousins, or half brothers, had been among 
the number of the twelve, what ground could there have been 
for such an opposition ? 

2. The office of the twelve was always understood in the 
early Church to have been of a missionary kind ; and the notion 
of fixing St. James at Jerusalem, seems to have been brought 
in by the Romanists with a view of justifying them in settling 
St. Peter at Antioch and at Rome. 

3 Those who are surprised to find St. James called an 
apostle after he had been appointed bishop of Jerusalem by the 
twelve, would probably be as unwilling to allow the same title 
to St Barnabas, were it not gi>en him in like manner, Acts 
xiv, 14. 

12 a.d. 53. 13 a d. 5-S. 



160 THE FIVE EMPIRES. A.D. 1-100. 

ness of Julius Caesar; but Nero, the present em- 
peror, though a monster in human shape, had not 
yet turned his ferocity against the Christians. St. 
Paul was released, after remaining two years at 
Rome ; and he had time to visit Spain, and pos- 
sibly Britain, before he returned to die as a martyr 
in the same city. 14 

During the latter years of St. Paul's life, he ad- 
dressed letters to Timothy and Titus, two of those 
whom he had endowed with especial authority in 
the Churches which he had founded. Timothy and 
Titus were evidently not mere presbyters in Ephe- 
sus and Crete, where they were severally placed, 
because they are addressed as having the power of 
ordination, and an authority over those who by 
right of age would be their superiors. Yet one 
thing is wanting, in what can be gathered on this 
subject from St. Paul's epistles, and from those 
parts of holy Scripture which were written before 
or shortly after his death. We find mention, in- 
deed, of deacons — of an order above them called 
either presbyters, i. e. elders, or bishops, to whom 
the people were ordered to be obedient — and, lastly, 
of the apostles themselves, 15 as of the " ministers 
of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God." 16 
This last office had been invested with an espe- 
cial character of perpetuity by our Lord's parting 
injunction, that they should " go, teach all na- 
tions ;" and by His promise, to be with them " to 
the end of the world." But in what way this was 
to be fulfilled — whether by the miraculous pre- 
servation of their individual lives, or by the trans- 
mission of their authority to others, — required to 
be interpreted by the event. In what manner this 

14 a.d. 67-8. 15 Heb. xiii. 7, 17. 1S 1 Cor. iv. 1. 



WAS JUDAISM TO CEASE? 161 

system should endure ; and how, as in the Jewish 
Church, a perpetual succession of ministers should 
be provided, if those were taken away who had an 
immediate commission from God, — was not yet com- 
pletely stated. 

This silence seems to have had a close connexion 
with that which was still observed on another sub- 
ject. Was the Jewish system itself to survive ? As 
yet the apostles lived as Jews. Though St. Paul 
maintained that the Gentiles were free from the 
ceremonial law, yet he himself observed it. If the 
Jewish polity was to endure, the prophecies which 
spoke of the future greatness of God's people must 
apply to Israel after the flesh, not to Abraham's 
spiritual progeny. Did Israel and the inheritance 
of the tribes mean merely the possessors of the an- 
cient promise ; or was St. Paul instructed to teach 
some further lesson, when he called the Christian 
congregation the " Israel of God ?" The apostles, 
having begun by assuming that the Church in- 
herited the promises of the Old Testament, had 
confined it originally to the Jewish nation ; but 
now that all tribes were gathered into its fold, it 
became necessary to prove that the promises of the 
Old Testament were fulfilled in the Church. Till 
this was established, it was uncertain what perma- 
nence would be needed for the ministers of the new 
covenant, and how it would fulfil those conditions 
which prophecy had associated with the kingdom 
of God.' 

But whatever doubts existed, they were cleared 
up by an event which put to trial the different 
systems which claimed to be God's kingdom, and 
decided whether the promises of old time related to 
temporal Israel, or to the followers of Christ. This 
r 2 



162 THE FIVE EMPIRES. A.D. 1-100. 

event was the destruction of Jerusalem. 17 Our 
Lord had predicted it above forty years before, and 
St. Paul had declared it to be near at hand in his 
epistle to the Hebrews ; at length it came, accom- 
panied by such remarkable circumstances as shew r ed 
its great moment in the purposes of God. The Jews 
brought it upon themselves by their revolt against 
the Roman emperor Vespasian ; a revolt by which 
they put to proof their hope that the promised 
kingdom of the world was to be the inheritance of 
their nation. " The chief motive to this unhappy 
war," says their own historian Josephus, " was a 
text which said that in those days one should come 
out of Judasa, who should rule the whole earth. 
This they applied to their own nation." 18 Vespa- 
sian, who had succeeded to the empire after the 
destruction of the last relics of the family of Augus- 
tus, was not less disposed to view this prediction 
with attention.; and the surviving kinsmen of our 
Lord were endangered by the persecution which he 
exercised against the descendants of the house of 
David. 19 

But God left not the Jews without signs that 
His prophecy was to be otherwise interpreted. 
" What shall we say," asks Josephus, " respecting 
the comet that hung over Jerusalem a year to- 
gether in likeness of a sword ?" On the feast of 
pentecost, when the priests were going according 
to custom into the temple, they heard at first a con- 
fused murmur, and then a voice crying out in ar- 
ticulate words, " Let us depart hence." 20 Other 
signs, there were, which so reminded the Christians 
of our Lord's pro{ hecy, that, warned probably by 

17 A.n 70. ls Wars of the Jews, vii. 12. 

19 Euscbius, iii 12. % Tacitus, J list v. 1?. 



A.D. 1-100. DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. 163 

the apostles, they departed to Pella, a city beyond 
Jordan. But by all these things the unhappy Jews 
were not instructed. As if the whole nation were 
to be taught at once that their birthright was de- 
parted, they were gathered together with one con- 
sent at Jerusalem. " A general meeting, assembled 
from all quarters to celebrate the passover, were 
engaged in the war." 21 Titus, the son of the 
Roman emperor, after several bloody battles, shut 
them up within the walls. " This vast body of 
people was, by the righteous providence of God, 
cooped up in the city as in a prison." And now, 
therefore, all those things fell upon them which 
Moses had declared to be the marks of their last 
rejection. That very circumstance, which before- 
time must have seemed incredible, is declared by 
their own countryman to have happened. 22 " The 
tender and delicate woman among you, which would 
not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the 
ground for delicateness, her eye shall be evil to- 
wards her children, which she shall bear ; for she 
shall eat them, for want of ail things, secretly in 
the siege and straitness." 23 At length the city was 
taken and burnt to the ground. Eleven hundred 
thousand of the people were killed, and a large part 
of the ninety-seven thousand prisoners were sent 
" again' into Egypt," while the rest were sold for 
" bondsmen to their enemies." 24 

This great event, which, after a rebellion in the 
time of Hadrian, the Romans followed by an order 
that no Jew should enter Palestine, 25 was a proof 
to the Christians that the Jewish polity had termi- 

21 Josephus, vii. 16. ^ Josephus, \ii. 8. 

23 Deut. xxviii. 56-7. 

24 Deut. xxviii. 68. Josephus, vii. 17. 

25 Justin, Dialog, cum Trypho, § xvi. 



164 THE FIVE EMPIRES. A.D. 1-100- 

nated. The sceptre was now manifestly departed 
from them. Their captivity at Babylon had been 
partial and temporary. But the continued exile of 
the whole nation from their own land rendered the 
observance of Moses' law impossible. " I will shew 
you," says Justin Martyr, one of the earliest Chris- 
tian writers, to a learned Jew, " that your sacrifice 
of the passover was but temporary. Here is a proof 
of it. God allowed the passover to be sacrificed 
no where but in the place where He put His name ; 
foreseeing that after the suffering of Christ, this 
place, Jerusalem, should be given up to your ene- 
mies, and all your sacrifices come utterly to an 
end." 26 The same proof of the completion of 
the Jewish system occurs in an early collection 
of Christian regulations The name and the pro- 
mises which had belonged to the people of God's 
ancient election are there claimed as pertaining to 
the new. " It is impossible that in their dispersion 
among the Gentiles, they should observe the cere- 
monies of the law ; therefore let us Christians, suc- 
ceeding them, inherit their promises." 27 The deci- 
sion of this interesting question was forced upon 
the disciples of Israelitish origin by the conduct of 
the Romans ; for when all Jews were banished 
from the land of their inheritance, it was only by 
admitting that Judaism was merged in Christianity 
that they could return to their ancient abode. A 
portion of the Jewish Christians refused to recog- 
nise this truth ; and remaining at Pella, continued, 
as far as they could, to observe the law. But their 
false position threw them back after a time into the 
errors which they had escaped, till at length they 
rejected our Lord's divine character. Many, how- 

2fi Dialog, cum Trypho, § xL » Apqs. Con, vL 25. 



A P. 1-100. JEWISH LAW ABANDONED. 165 

ever, seem to have taken a more comprehensive 
view of their position, and to have discerned that 
because they were Christians, they were no longer 
Jews. 2 * 3 " Up to this time," says the historian 
Severus, " they united the worship of Christ with 
the observances of the law. But the exclusion of 
Jews from Jerusalem turned to the profit of the 
Christian faith ; God so ordained it, that His Church 
might be freed from bondage to the Mosaic ritual." 29 
Titus is said to have believed, that in destroying 
Jerusalem he was subverting the faith of the cross, 
for that Christianity must fall with Judaism, of 
which it was an offshoot. 30 But God rendered him 
an unconscious instrument in building up what 
he purposed to overthrow. The destruction of the 
parent root was essential to the vitality of its pro- 
geny ; for as soon as the removal of the ancient 
covenant had appropriated to Christ's Church the 
promises of Messiah's kingdom, it became apparent 
that the apostles must provide whatever was need- 
ful for its permanent continuance. And this, we 
are told, they did. Shortly before the destruction 
of Jerusalem, St. James, the bishop of that parent 
Church, had been murdered ; and the temporary 
vacancy of the office, as though in anticipation of 
the approaching crisis, may have led the adversary 
to question the perpetuity of the Christian system. 
But no sooner had it been established by this deci- 

28 St. Augustine says that St. Paul observed the Mosaic 
law, not as necessary but as pious and allowable for Christians 
of Jewish origin. Such observance, howevei*, in his own day, 
he says, was no longer allowable even for them. He compares 
the Jewish system to a body, which, though it had " lost its 
life at the time of our Lord's death and resurrection," yet re- 
quired honourable attendance till the time of its interment. 
Epis. lxxxii. 12-16. 

29 Sulp. Severus, Hist. ii. §31. 

30 Sulp. Severus, ii. § ">0. 



166 THE FIVE EMPIRES. A.D. 1-100. 

sive event, that the line of the apostles had super- 
seded the line of Aaron, than " our Lord's surviving 
apostles and disciples met together from every quar- 
ter," to appoint the bishop who should have the 
guidance of the Church in Judaea. 31 And when 
St. John addressed the book of Revelation to the 
Churches of Asia a few years afterwards, a bishop, 
then called its angel (a name of nearly the same 
signification with apostle), was ruling over every 
single Church. Polycarp, the angel of the Church 
of Smyrna, afterwards a martyr for the faith, had 
been appointed, as we learn from his disciple 
Irenaeus, 52 by the apostle St. John. Before the 
beloved apostle was taken from the earth, this order 
was every where established. So that the authority 
which St. Paul had given to Timothy and Titus is 
proved not to have been merely a temporary charge, 
coeval only with the apostle's life, but to have been 
a part of that office which our Lord had declared 
should be as abiding as the world. Hence we read 
in our Prayer-book, 33 that " it is manifest unto all 
men diligently reading holy Scripture and ancient 
authors, that from the apostles' time there have 
been these three orders in the Church, — bishops, 
priests, and deacons." And of this we have an es- 
pecial confirmation from Ignatius, whom the apostles 
had appointed bishop of Antioch, 34 and who wrote 
letters to other Churches only fifteen years after St. 
John's death. Every where he speaks of the bishop 
as the Church's head, of priests as ordained by him 
to dispense the sacraments, and of deacons as their 
ministers. Of Christ's sacraments he speaks as he 
had learned from St. John, who had completed the 

31 Euseb. iii. 11. 32 Irenseus, Hi. 3. a.d. 94. 

33 Preface to Ordination-service. 

34 Chrysostom, Horn, in Tgn. ii. 593. 



A.D. 1-100. SYSTEM OF CHURCH COMPLETED. 167 

revelation of their nature and use in his gospel, 
written shortly before his departure, and near se- 
venty years after the death of our Lord. For St. 
John had not " tasted of death" till the consum- 
mation of the first covenant " had been fulfilled,"^ 5 
and till the whole system of the Church had been 
established. Then was the last eyewitness taken 
away, and the testimony was bequeathed to the 
successors of the apostles. 

» A.D. 100. 



CHAPTER XX. 

&postolu f&en. ©fje 1&mgtrom of ©fjrfet a:tettto &. 

DIFFICULTIES OF THE FIRST SUCCESSORS OF THE APOSTLES — 

OUR LORD'S PRESENCE WITH HIS CHURCH UNITY THE 

SUSTAINING PRINCIPLE OF HIS KINGDOM — ST. CLEMENT 

ST. IGNATIUS REASONS FOR UNITY MAINTAINED BY 

COMMUNITY IN WORSHIP AND ORDINANCES MARTYRDOM 

OF ST. IGNATIUS THE CHRISTIAN CITY CHRISTIAN PA- 
TRIOTISM — HEGESIPPUS GNOSTICS OPPOSED BY TESTI- 
MONY OF EARLY CHURCH — IRENjEUS GREAT IMPORTANCE 

OF CHURCH-SYSTEM IN THE INFANCY OF CHRIST'S KING- 
DOM THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND APPEALS TO ITS AUTHO- 
RITY RAPID ADVANCE OF THE FIFTH EMPIRE CONCORD 

WITHIN, AND OUTWARD PROTECTION. 

Then up arose a person of deep reach 

And rare insight hard matters to reveal, 

That well could charm his tongue and time his speech 

To all assaies ; his name was called Zeal. 

SPENSEK. 

If an apostle could declare, " we have this treasure 
in earthen vessels," how much more deeply must 
the same truth have been felt by his successors! 
Humanly speaking, what could seem more desolate 
than their state ? They were left in the wide world 
of the Roman empire to build up that spiritual king- 
dom by which it was to be succeeded. Its strength 
and greatness, the injustice of its officers, the cruelty 
of its princes, the contempt of the learned, the vio- 
lence of the people, — how were these to be resisted 
by that handful of poor, untaught, unarmed " stran- 
gers who were scattered over" 1 its vast dominions? 
1 1 Pet. i. 1. 



a.d. 100-200. our lord's presence. 169 

And now that the apostles were gone, miracles either 
ceased, or were wrought seldom and by few. What 
means were there for building up this fifth kingdom, 
which could be compared with the wealth of Nebu- 
chadnezzar, the virtue of Cyrus, the enterprise of 
Alexander, or the fortune of Rome? 

The absence of other miracles exhibits with 
greater clearness that grand and lasting wonder, the 
Saviour's presence in His Church from age to age. 
By His Spirit He was with it ; so that it neither 
lacked wisdom nor zeal ; so that the apostolic men, 
to whom His kingdom had been entrusted, moved 
on resistless in the way of His will. " We have this 
treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of 
the power may be of God, and not of us." And the 
two great types, which had been given of old time, 
shewed them whither their efforts were conducting 
— the history of God's ancient people, which had 
been the spiritual preparation for the kingdom of 
Christ; and that of those four earthly empires, which 
had been its temporal forerunners. To each of these 
had the Church been likened in holy Scripture. It 
was the new Jerusalem, and therefore it must have 
the distinguishing privilege of ancient Israel, — one 
common worship : it was the fifth kingdom, and 
therefore, like the four preceding, it must have one 
common government. And such was the fabric 
which the Spirit of God raised up, notwithstanding 
every obstacle. For so scattered as were the early 
Christians, composed of many nations, using diffe 
rent languages, with different laws, habits, and pre* 
judices, with no central place, like Jerusalem, where 
they should meet for worship, nor any single earthly 
potentate, like the Roman emperor, to whom they 
should owe obedience, — how unlikely were they to 
maintain one united worship or one common govern- 
ment ! There could be no earthly centre for com- 
Q 



170 THE FIVE EMPIRES. A.D. 100-200. 

mon worship, when the city was gone which had 
been hallowed by the Lord's presence ; and as yet 
the Roman bishop had not made the least show of 
pretending to that tyrannous power which he after- 
wards usurped. The wide dispersion of the Chris- 
tians is thus strikingly described by one of their 
number, 2 in this first generation which followed the 
apostles : " The Christians are distinguished neither 
in country, speech, nor government from other men. 
They neither dwell in towns of their own, use their 
own dialect, nor any peculiar mode of life. . . . They 
occupy Greek or barbarian cities, as their lot may 
be ; but following their country's rule in dress and 
manners, they propose to themselves the establish- 
ment of what is doubtless a strange and marvellous 
institution. . . . They inhabit their native country, 
yet as sojourners. With the privileges of citizens, 
they submit to the condition of strangers. Every 
foreign land becomes their country, yet every coun- 
try is foreign. . . . For they dwell upon earth, but 
their citizenship is in heaven. . . . They obey the ap- 
pointed laws, yet outrun them by their individual 
excellence. In a word, what the soul is to the body, 
such to the world are the Christians. As all the 
body's members are animated by the soul, so are 
the Christians scattered through all cities of the 
earth." 

In such a wide-spread body we might well expect 
to find no agreement, but that the same name would 
be associated with every various form of worship and 
government. But where then would have been the 
new Jerusalem, which was to exhibit its one collec- 
tive worship, and where that fifth kingdom, which 
was to be one government, like the preceding four ? 
Now our Lord had predicted that His people should 

8 Ep. ad Diogn. " apostolorum discipulus," § 5. 



A.D. 100-200. UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 171 

be one, not in name only, but, as He Himself was 
one with the Father, in truth ; 3 and in His wisdom 
He so constituted His Church, that it remained one 
both in inward worship and in outward form. This 
followed from the manner in which its blessings were 
given. His disciples taught that its advantages were 
not bestowed on men except as members of that one 
great community, which they were every where or- 
dered to extend. There was no such thing as being 
a Christian apart. That gift of God's grace, which 
was implanted in the heart of every sincere believer 
as the " earnest" of heavenly blessedness, had its 
abode in the midst of the Church, and diffused itself 
severally to all its members. Only, therefore, in the 
Christian community was there the presence of the 
Holy Ghost. The Church was a hallowed soil, which 
was every where forming itself amidst the treacher- 
ous quicksands of heathen ignorance. To worship 
with it, was to draw near to the fountain of grace ; 
to partake in its sacraments worthily, was to obtain 
the Holy Spirit. We read of but one place where 
these truths met with opposition, — the wealthy and 
luxurious city of Corinth. Even during St. Paul's 
lifetime, he had found it needful to reprove its in- 
habitants for their divisions; and shortly after his 
death there arose new troubles, because " one or 
two persons rebelled against the ministers" to whose 
charge they had been committed. 4 Several of the 
apostles were still living; but as St. Peter and St. 
Paul, the chief of those who had travelled into the 
west, were removed, 5 the Church at Corinth applied 
for advice to St. Clement, who was then bishop of 
Rome. St. Clement's reply remains — one of the 
most interesting documents in Church-history, both 
because it shews that the Church of Rome at that 

3 John xvii. 21. 4 St. Clem. i. § 47. 

5 St. Clem. i. § 5. 



172 THE FIVE EMPIRES. a.D. 100-200. 

time asserted no claim to govern other Christian 
societies, and also because it discovers the state of 
feeling about the time 6 of the destruction of Jerusa- 
lem, before the already ascertained offices of bishop 
and priest had been discriminated by the names 
which afterwards distinguished them. 

St. Clement, like St. Paul, speaks much of the 
necessity of union, and of the unchristian nature of 
religious divisions. " Have we not one God, and 
one Christ, and one Spirit of grace which has been 
poured out upon us, and one calling in Christ? . . . 
why do we oppose ourselves to the body of which 
we are ourselves a part, and forget that we are mem- 
bers one of another?" 7 He reminds the Corinthians, 
that since our Lord had, through His apostles, ap- 
pointed a peculiar order in His Church, unity and 
peace could be procured in no other way than by 
submission. " We ought to do every thing which 
the Lord ordained in its appointed way. He ordered 
that our sacramental offerings and our public prayers 
should not be performed rashly and at random, but 
in their prescribed season and time. And where He 
would have them performed, and through the agency 
of what persons, He has Himself decided by His 
sovereign will. That all things being duly performed 
and to His good pleasure, may be acceptable before 
Him. Those, therefore, who render their sacra- 
mental services in the appointed manner are ac- 
cepted and happy. By obeying the Master's injunc- 
tions, they are free from error. For the chief priest 
has his peculiar ministrations committed to him ; the 
priests have their own place assigned them ; the Le- 
vites are bound to their appropriate duties ; the laity 
is bound to lay services. 

" Let each one of you, my brethren, remaining 
conscientiously in his own station, render thanks to 
6 a.d. 70. 7 St. Clem. § 46. 



A.D. 100-200. ST. CLEMENT. 173 

God, not overstepping the appointed rule of his ser- 
vice, in all honour." Then, after touching upon the 
exact obedience which was required under the Jew- 
ish law, he contrasts it with the still more loyal 
reverence which might be expected from those who 
lived under the " law of liberty." " To them, if 
doing ought contrary to what His will prescribed, 
death is assigned as the punishment. Consider, bre- 
thren, whether, as we have been thought worthy of 
greater knowledge, we are not exposed to a heavier 
penalty. To us the apostles have delivered the Gos- 
pel from Jesus Christ our Lord. Christ was sent 
from God, the apostles from Christ. So far, then, 
the will of God was exactly followed. The apostles 
having received their charge, having been confirmed 
by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and strengthened 
by the full assurance of the Holy Ghost, went forth 
to declare the coming of the kingdom of God. When 
preaching in every country and city, they appointed 
the first-fruits of their disciples, having made trial of 
them by the Holy Ghost, to be bishops and curates 8 
for them that believe. The apostles knew, by our 
Lord's teaching, that strife would arise concerning 
the bishop's office ; ajid therefore, having perfect 
knowledge of what would happen, they appointed 
those of whom I have spoken, and gave a succession 
for time to come, that when they fell asleep, other 
approved men might inherit their ministry." 9 

Such is the view given of Christ's Church during 
the lifetime of the apostles, by one of whom holy 
Scripture witnesses that his " name was in the book 

8 Literally " bishops and deacons." It has been stated 
that at this time, a.d. 70, the names of the three offices were 
not exactly discriminated, though the offices themselves were 
so. This seems best expressed by taking an expression which 
our Church has employed with the same latitude. 

9 St Clement, i. & 40-41 

Q2 



174 THE FIVE EMPIRES. A.D. 100-200. 

of life." 10 But, it may be said, could not God's 
grace be bestowed otherwise? Can we limit His 
power to one single channel ? Was not the Word 
present with the patriarchs of old ? May not God 
have continued to bestow His grace more widely? 
This inquiry is foreign to the present narrative. The 
question is not, what may be the extent of God's 
mercies ; but by what means it pleased Him to raise 
up that fabric of the Church which He " built upon 
the foundation of the apostles, Jesus Christ Himself 
being the chief corner-stone." This can only be 
gathered from what was actually done by the apos- 
tles, and by those holy men whom they employed as 
their chief instruments. The words of one such, St. 
Clement, have been given, and they shew the judg- 
ment of the whole Christian community ; for, as being 
universally approved, they were long wont to be read 
in public worship for the instruction of the whole 
congregation. No less regard was felt for the say- 
ings of another martyr of that age, Ignatius, con- 
cerning whom the Church of Antioch testifies that 
his letters " abound with the spirit of grace, in prayer 
and exhortation." 

His six epistles to the chief Churches of that 
day, 11 not only exhibit his faith and piety in the near 
prospect of being taken to Him whom not seeing 
" he loved," but they shew likewise what course God's 
providence was taking for building up the kingdom 
of Christ. Ignatius had been appointed bishop of 
Antioch in the latter days of St. John, and when the 
different members which make up the body of Christ 
had been distinguished in name as well as in office. 
He speaks often, and in their several order, of bishops, 
priests, and deacons. " Where these orders," he says, 
" are not found, there can be no Church." 12 " Let 

10 Phil. iv. Z. » A.D. 107. 

12 Trallians, § 3. 



A.D. 100-200. THE CHURCH, HOW BUILT. 175 

no one take any part in Church-offices without the 
bishop's sanction. Let that be esteemed to be a real 
celebration of the Lord's supper which is performed 
by the bishop, or by some one whom he appoints. 
Where they have the bishop's guidance, there let the 
congregation attend; just as where Christ Jesus is, 
there is the Catholic Church, Without the bishop's 
authority, it is neither lawful to baptise nor to cele- 
brate the communion." 13 

This close attention to the Church's order Igna- 
tius does not state merely as a positive command, 
though that were reason enough for obedience ; but 
he speaks of it as the means of procuring those 
gifts of grace which are the peculiar privilege of 
Christians. These gifts are obtained only by union 
with Christ. Men cannot be united to Christ ex- 
cept by being members of the Church, which is His 
body. " Let no one," he says, " be deceived. Unless 
a man comes to the Church's altars, he is deprived 
of the bread of life. For if the prayer of one or 
two is of such avail, how much more that of the 
bishops and of the collective Church l" 14 " If any 
follows a divider, he will not have his lot in the 
kingdom of God. Be careful, therefore, to join in 
the one eucharist. For the flesh of our Lord Jesus 
Christ is but one, and one cup only is there where- 
by we participate in His blood. There is one altar, 
one bishop, with the priests and deacons, my fellow- 
servants." 15 

This constant mention of the ordinances and 
ministers of the Church is attended by perpetual 
reference to the gifts of grace, as rendering them so 
important. Christians are to remember to be in 
communion with the bishops, " that they may be 
one, not in form merely, but in spirit." 16 For to the 

13 Smyrnseans, § 8. 14 Ephesians, § 5. 

15 Philadelphians, § 3. 6 Magnesians, § 13. 



170 THE FIVE EMPIRES. A.». 100-200 

collective body of bishops, as representatives of the 
whole Church, Ignatius looked, as inheriting that 
gift of our Lord's presence which had so solemnly 
been bestowed upon the college of apostles. " The 
bishops, who have been appointed throughout the 
whole extent of the world, make up the mind of 
Christ," 17 And this principle, that the several pub- 
lic officers of all the Churches made up that united 
body of Christ with which He was ever present — a 
principle to which Ignatius pledged himself in the 
immediate prospect of death — " with those who 
reverence their bishops, priests, and deacons, may 
my lot be in God !" 18 — the Christian community 
maintained for many years by constant intercourse 
among its different portions. Tertullian writes, 19 
nearly one hundred years later, " the many and 
numerous Churches which now exist make up that 
original one which was founded by the apostles. 
Thus all are primitive and all apostolic, while all 
prove themselves to be the same community; for 
they are bound together by a common affection ; 
they bestow upon one another the name of breth- 
ren ; and they exchange the rights of friendship." 

This intercourse was maintained by means of 
commendatory letters from the several bishops, 
which entitled any member of their Churches who 
travelled abroad to be received into the communion 
of any other Christian society. When bishops them- 
selves visited foreign cities, the unity of their commis- 
sion was recognised by their sharing in the celebra- 
tion of the holy communion. Thus, when Polycarp, 
bishop of Smyrna, visited Rome, in the time of 
Anicetus, 20 he bore the chief part in the consecra- 
tion of the sacred elements, as a token that his 
character as a brother bishop was admitted by the 

»' Ephes. § 3. »8 To Polycarp, § 6. 

19 De Praescrip. § 20. So a.d. 158. 



A.D. 100-200. ST. IGNATIUS. 177 

Bishop of Rome. Thus was St. Paul's saying ful- 
filled, that " if one member suffered, all the mem- 
bers suffered with it ; and if one member rejoiced, 
all the members rejoiced with it." When the same 
Polycarp offered himself as a confessor for the faith 
of Christ, the Church over which he had ruled sent 
the news of his warfare in the common cause " to 
all the dioceses of the Catholic Church." The cir- 
cumstances of Ignatius's own martyrdom 21 were in 
like manner widely circulated, and have been handed 
down to our time. They are rendered memorable 
not only by his high office and character — a fa- 
vourite disciple of St. John, appointed to rule over 
the Church where the name of Christians had first 
arisen, — but also because in him the kingdom of 
Christ came into contact with one of the chiefest 
champions of that fourth empire, which it was des- 
tined to survive. 

The Roman world continued to be governed by 
emperors, though the families of Julius Csesar and of 
Vespasian had respectively passed away. One of 
the most celebrated of these rulers was Trajan, 
" In the ninth year of his reign, this emperor, elated 
with his victory over the Scythians, Dacians, and 
many other nations, and thinking that, to complete 
his conquest, nothing remained but to overthrow the 
impious system of the Christians, threatened to per- 
secute those who would not join in that dasmon- 
worship which all mankind approved, and compelled 
the saints either to sacrifice or die. Then was this 
noble soldier of Christ (Ignatius) alarmed for the 
Church of Antioch, and he presented himself to 
Trajan, who was at that time in the place, and full 
of his plans of marching into Armenia against the 
Parthians. He stood face to face with the emperor, 
when this dialogue arose: — 

21 a.d. 107. Martyrhim S. Ignatii. 



178 THE FIVE EMPIRES. A.D. 100-200. 

Trajan. " Wretch ! what evil spirit possesses 
you, that you are a daring transgressor of my com- 
mands, and lead on others to their ruin ?" 

Ignatius. " He with whom God abides is pos- 
sessed by no spirit of evil, for the evil spirits have 
departed from the servants of God." 

Trajan. " With whom does God abide?" 

Ignatius. " With him who has Christ in his 
bosom." 

Trajan. " And think you not that my soul too 
is inhabited by gods, since I use them as my assist- 
ants against my enemies ?" 

Ignatius. " You err in calling those spirits 
gods whom the heathen worship; for there is one 
God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all 
that is therein ; and one Jesus Christ, the only be- 
gotten Son of God, in whose kingdom may I have 
my portion !" 

Trajan. " Do you speak of Him who was cruci- 
fied in the time of Pontius Pilate ?" 

Ignatius. " I speak of Him who crucified my 
sin with its author ; and who trod all devilish deceit 
and crime under the feet of them in whose hearts 
He inhabits." 

Trajan. " Do you, then, bear this crucified one 
within you ?" 

Ignatius. " Yes ; for it is written, 1 will dwell in 
them, and walk in them." 

Trajan. " We enjoin that Ignatius, who says 
that he bears the crucified within him, should be 
carried by soldiers to the mighty city of Rome, 
there to be the food of wild beasts, as a spectacle 
to the people." 

And thus they parted — the one to triumph over 
the utmost East, the other to die amidst the derision 
of the capital of the West. Thus did the might of 
the flesh gain a momentary victory over the might 



A.D. 100-200. ST. l'OLYCARP. 179 

of the spirit; for who could gainsay the emperor's 
will ? Instantly was Ignatius seized by ten soldiers, 
almost as savage as the monsters who were to de- 
vour him, and dragged through vast regions and 
over wide seas, till he was cast to wild beasts in the 
very heart of that great empire whose power he had 
resisted. He had stood up a solitary man against 
the matchless strength of that iron kingdom. " How 
easily was he trampled to the earth, as by some re- 
sistless engine rushing forward and crushing all that 
opposed it ! So it went on its way, that proud and 
mighty empire, wearing away the saints of the Most 
High. But its hour came; it crumbled, and passed 
away. Its palaces are dust; its provinces have 
passed from one conqueror to another; its populous 
capital is slowly sinking into desolation ; its very 
memory has faded from the lands wherein it ruled, 
1 So let all Thine enemies perish, O Lord !"' 22 

Ignatius suffered martyrdom only about seven 
years after the death of the beloved apostle ; but his 
friend Polycarp was spared above fifty years longer 
as a witness to the truth. He had been appointed 
bishop by St. John ; and his continuance in that 
conspicuous post during half the second century 
affords one of those connecting links by which the 
system of the apostles was perpetuated. At length, 
in the reign of Antoninus, 23 a successor of Trajan, we 
read of his appearance before the Roman governor 
of proconsular Asia. " ' Respect your age,' said the 
Roman ; ' swear by the fortune of Caesar ; repent, 
and say, Take away the atheists.' Polycarp, waving 
his hand, with a melancholy glance towards the 
multitude, said, as he looked up with a sigh to 
heaven, ' Take away the atheists.' The governor 
continued to urge him : ' Take the oath, and I will 

22 Sermon by the Rev. H. W. Wilberforce on the rebuilding 
of St. Lawrence's Church, Southampton. ^ a.d. 167. 



180 THE FIVE EMPIRES. A.D. 100-200. 

release you : revile Christ.' ' Eighty and six years/ 
replied Polycarp, < have I been His servant, and He 
has never injured me ; how, then, can I revile my 
Saviour and my King ?' Being still further impor- 
tuned to swear by the fortune of Caesar, he said, * If 
you think it possible that I can comply, and pretend 
to be ignorant of my character, hear at once who I 
am, — my name is Christian.'" 

Wheresoever the masters of the world turned, 
they found, in like manner, that their power was 
limited ; and that the fifth kingdom, which was grow- 
ing up among them, possessed a dominion over the 
hearts of its subjects which could not be done away. 
Ten years after the martyrdom of Polycarp we have 
a similar witness in the West to the absorbing inter- 
est which it had gained over the minds of men. The 
Churches of Lyons and Vienne, in Gaul, were at 
that time enduring a fierce persecution, in which 
Pothinus, bishop of Lyons, was martyred. At this 
time we are told that a Christian named Sanctus 
was tortured with peculiar cruelty, his enemies ex- 
pecting that the intensity of his sufferings " would 
force from him some unbecoming reply. But so 
great was his constancy, that, in answer to all their 
demands, he would neither mention his own name, 
nor the name of his city nor his country, nor whether 
he were bond or free ; but, in reply to every demand, 
he said, 'lama Christian.' This one thing com- 
prised his name, city, country, and condition." 24 

The feeling and principle which attached so much 
importance to the very name of Christian, is illus- 
trated at a somewhat later period in the history 
of certain Egyptian martyrs. Firmilian, the Roman 
officer before whom they were brought, asked the 
name of one whom by many tortures he had been 
unable to induce to sacrifice. " Instead of his own 
M Euseb. v. 1. 



A.D. 100-200. CHRISTIAN CITY. 181 

name, the martyr returned one taken from the pro- 
phets; for he and his companions had renounced 
the idolatrous names which had been given them, 
and had joined themselves to God's true Israel, not 
only in act, but in their very appellations. The go- 
vernor, not able to understand the name he gave, 
asked next what was his country. He replied in 
like manner, that his country was Jerusalem ; refer- 
ring to St. Paul's words, ' Jerusalem from above is 
the mother of us all ;' and again, ' we are come to 
the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.' 
To this city were his thoughts turning. But Fir- 
milian, fixed upon what was present, was debating 
in his mind what city, and where, this might be. 
With further tortures he sought to extort a true 
confession, and asked often what city was this, and 
in what country did it lie. ' It is the city which 
belongs exclusively to God's servants. No others 
can partake in it. It may be seen in the utmost 
east, even under the rising sun.' Thus did the 
martyr pursue his own train of thought, regardless 
of the violence of his persecutors. But the governor 
was agitated and confused, supposing that the Chris- 
tians were surely designing to found some city which 
should be hostile to the Roman name." 25 

And a city the Christians were truly building — 
that one Church Catholic, which had every where 
one name and one communion, because one Jesus 
Christ was every where present with it all. This 
truth Irenaeus witnesses, who, having in early youth 
been Poly carp's disciple, was presbyter of the Church 
in Gaul during the persecution of Antoninus, 26 and 
was made bishop of Lyons after the martyrdom of 
Pothinus. Polycarp had lived during the first half 
of that century which followed St. John's death; 
Irenaeus teaches us the Church's doings during its 

25 Eus. de Martyr. Palsest. § 11. ** a.d. 177. 

It 



182 THE FIVE EMPIRES. A.D. 100-200. 

second portion. He declares what faith the Chris- 
tians " had received from the apostles and their 
disciples." And this faith, he says, "the Church, 
though scattered throughout the whole world, guards 
diligently, as though it inhabited a single mansion. 
It has the same faith, because it has but one heart 
and one soul ; and because it has but one mouth, 
it teaches and delivers the same accordant words: 
and though different languages prevail in different 
countries, yet one sense only is inculcated. In no 
place is there any private creed or peculiar opinion ; 
not in Germany nor in Spain; not among the Gauls 
or in the East ; not in Egypt, Libya, or the central 
parts of the civilised world ; — but, as God's creature 
the sun stands singly forth, and is equally visible 
throughout the earth, in like manner is the preach- 
ing of the truth manifested ; and it, too, gives light 
to every one that cometh into the world." 27 

It was surely a wonderful sight, when men were 
so daring as thus to cast away their lives for a name, 
and yet bowed so submissively to the yoke of apos- 
tolic doctrine. No common principle could possess 
the propagators of the Christian system. What their 
principle was, cannot be doubted by those who be- 
lieve that the Lord of life is truly present with His 
Church; and that whenever it goes forth in His 
name, with zeal, meekness, and purity, no power 
in earth or hell can prevail for its defeat. Christ's 
dwelling with His whole Church is the secret of the 
establishment of His kingdom. His servants fought 
with an unconquerable belief that He was ever near: 
but that their belief was not only confident but last- 
ing, that it filled not only ardent but profound minds, 
arose from this one circumstance, that He was with 
them in truth. His presence was not a fiction, but 
a fact. This it was which allayed the tortures of 
27 Iren. i. 10, § 2. 



a.d. 100-200. Christ's kingdom one. 183 

the martyr, which gave energy to the thoughtful 
spirit, and quickened the whole body of the Church. 
And it pleased Hiin who can make the simplest 
means His instrument, to render this oneness of 
spirit, which the Church drew necessarily from its 
common Head, the most powerful agent in its growth 
and vigour. All Christians were one, because through 
one outward instrument, the Church, they partici 
pated in our Lord's spiritual presence ; and this unity 
preserved the simplicity of their faith, and animated 
their labours of love. The writings of the early 
Christians are distinguished by a noble self-forget- 
fulness, which saw all in Christ, which sought all 
through the advancement of His kingdom, which 
knew no private interest ; so that men could scarce 
find room to speak of their own feelings, in their 
anxiety for the welfare of the universal Church. 
And this Christian patriotism had its reward. Their 
enlarged affections redounded to their individual 
benefit. They gave their labour to the establish- 
ment of Christ's kingdom, and He engrafted them 
into His mystic body ; they were anxious that His 
power should be exalted, and He made their sons 
to grow up as young plants, and their daughters to 
be as the polished corners of the temple. 

This feeling of the unity of the Church was the 
predominating idea of the early Christians, They 
describe it as one mighty tower, 28 compacted toge- 
ther by the union of individual Christians; or as 
one great nation, 29 inheriting the name and pro- 
mises of ancient Israel. They looked at it as one, 
not in name only, but in life ; as the one body of 
Christ, as the one kingdom which was to prevail 
among the nations. Its establishment they per- 
ceived to be the greatest event in the history of the 
world ; its blessings the chiefest of which the child- 

28 Hermas's Pastor. ™ Apos. Con. ubi sup. 



184 THE FIVE EMPIRES. A D. 100-200. 

ren of men could be partakers. Hence when Hege- 
sippus would write a sequel to the Acts of the Apos- 
tles, he first visited every Church from Palestine to 
Italy, that he might be assured of the perfect unity 
of that vast body which then bore the name of 
Christian. This remarkable inquiry was made fifty 
years after St. John's death ; 30 and we learn the 
result of his observations from those who wrote 
when his history (now lost) was in the hands of 
all men. " As yet," he says, " the Church retains 
its original purity; every where I have conversed 
with the bishops, and have found that in every 
city, and in every successive appointment of their 
predecessors, the Church's laws have been observed. 
I have received from all of them the same statement 
of their doctrines." When Hegesippus made this 
inquiry, the first generation of bishops was not yet 
extinct : and the apostles had been directed to the 
wisest means of attaining this concord; for they 
had appointed "the first-fruits of their disciples" 
to this important office. 31 The testimony of such 
men served to decide any doubts which might arise 
as to the doctrines of the Gospel. 

Of this we have an instance towards the end of 
the second century, when certain persons proposed 
to give a different view of the truth of God from 
that which had always been received in the Churches. 
They were called Gnostics, because they thought 
that by their own knowledge (gnosis) they could 
understand the apostles better than the Christian 
teachers of their day, and could enter further into 
the words of Christ than the very apostles who 
transmitted them. Against these innovators Ire- 
nseus wrote, 32 and somewhat later Tertullian. 33 And 

30 a.d. 150. Eusebius, iv. 22. 

31 St. Clement's Epistle, ubi sup. 

32 a.d. 120 to a.d. 202. *» a.d. 150 to a.d. 220. 



IMPORTANCE OF CHURCH'S TESTIMONY. 185 

they appeal always to the consistent testimony of 
those bishops and Churches that lived in commu- 
nion together throughout the world. " Whatever 
secret mysteries the apostles had known," says Ire- 
nseus, 32 " they would naturally have imparted them 
most fully to those to whom they committed the 
care of the Churches." " We can number up those 
who have been appointed bishops in the several 
Churches by the apostles, and mention their suc- 
cessors to this very hour." " Let these men," says 
Tertullian, 33 " declare the origin of their Churches ; 
let them unroll the order of their bishops ; let them 
shew it to have commenced from the beginning ; so 
that each bishop had an apostle, or apostolic man, 
as the original sanction of his succession. For in 
this way it is that the apostolic Churches produce 
their pedigree : thus does Rome refer to Clement, 
who was consecrated by St. Peter ; and Smyrna to 
Polycarp, who was appointed by St. John." 

As an individual instance of this powerful appeal, 
take the letter of Irenseus to Florinus, who had been 
seduced into the Gnostic heresy. " These, Flori- 
nus, to use a mild expression, are no wholesome doc- 
trines. They are not accordant with the teaching 
of the Church ; they lead to the greatest impiety. 
... It was not thus that we were taught by the 
elders who had enjoyed converse with the apostles. 
I remember as a boy to have seen you with Poly- 
carp in Lower Asia ; you, with good prospects in 
the emperor's court, wished, however, to secure his 
approbation. What happened then I remember 
better than recent occurrences. For the instruction 
which we receive in childhood, growing with our 
growth, becomes identified with ourselves. So that 
I can remember the place where the blessed Poly- 
carp sat and talked — his coming in and going out — 
32 Iren. iii. 3. § 1. s De Praescrip. § 32. 

r2 



186 THE FIVE EMPIRES. A.D. 100-200, 

the character of his life — his outward form — his ser- 
mons to the people — his account of his intercourse 
with St. John, and the others who had seen the 
Lord — and what he stated concerning their words, 
and the account they had given him respecting the 
Lord. And Polycarp's statement respecting our 
Lord's miracles and teaching, derived from eyewit- 
nesses of the word of life, is in exact accordance 
with the Scriptures. All this, by God's mercy, I 
then listened to with interest, storing it up, not in 
books, but in the table of my heart." 34 

These extracts suggest cause for thankfulness 
to God's mercy, in that He was pleased to build 
His Church upon the foundation of the apostles and 
prophets. The written word, the rule of Christian 
belief, might have been all that was vouchsafed to 
us. The New Testament might have been given at 
once, without ought to guide men into its system and 
signification. God was pleased to deal otherwise. 
He was pleased to secure the right interpretation of 
His word in that first age, when it was most impor- 
tant, by establishing the system of His Church be- 
fore the Scriptures were in the hands of Christians. 
When Clement wrote to the Corinthians, three gos- 
pels only were in being, yet the Word was wor- 
shipped in the western Church ; and our Lord's 
body and blood were known to be spiritually pre- 
sent in the holy communion, as certainly as after 
those truths had been more clearly revealed in St. 
John's gospel. When Pantasnus, in the middle of 
this century, went as a missionary to India, 35 he 
found Christians there, in union with the universal 
Church, yet acquainted with no part of Scripture 
but St. Matthew's gospel. Of other disciples we 
hear, even at a later period, that they had no writ- 
ten Scriptures at all. But they had "the apostles' 

w Eusebius, v. 30. * Eusebius, v. 10. 



a.d. 100-200. st. Paul's unwritten gospel. 187 

doctrine," that " gospel" which St. Paul had " re- 
ceived," " the form of sound words" in which Timo- 
thy continued. 36 

We thank God, therefore, not only for the gift 
of the Scriptures, but also for that institution of His 
Church which was in being before the Scriptures 
were written, and without which they would not 
have produced that unity of belief which led to the 
speedy growth of Christ's kingdom. For had the 
Scriptures been given, as a naked depository of new 
facts, into the hands of men, each one would have 
judged of them by himself; the appeal would have 
been rather to the head than the heart, and private 
study would have been more esteemed than that gift 
of grace which God bestows. Hence faith would 
have flourished less than reasoning. Every one would 
have had his own view of truth, until truth had 
seemed to be with no one. This was actually the 
case with those bold men, who, in the first century 
after the apostles' times, laid their hands upon holy 
writ, and undertook by their own wit to explain it. 
Their arguments on Scripture, whether with one 
another or with Christians, had no end. It was 
easy, indeed, to confute, but it was impossible to 
silence. " It is useless," says TertuUian, 37 " to ap- 
peal, in such cases to Scripture; for wLen no victory 
can be gained, or none but what is doubtful, you 
ought not to enter into dispute. True, you will 
lose nothing but your breath in the contest ; but 
then you will gain nothing but indignation at your 
opponents' blasphemy." 

How different had been the Church's progress 
in that tender state, if there had been no means by 
which such dangers could be averted ! If her trunk 
had been split and her roots dissevered, how could 

86 Acts xi. 42; 1 Cor. xv. 12 ; 2 Tim. i. 13. 
»7 De Prcescrip. § 17 19. 



188 THE FIVE EMPIRES. A.D. 100-200. 

she have become the greatest among the trees of 
the forest? How could the weak be expected to 
hazard their lives, if even the strong had no assur- 
ance what were the true doctrines of the apostles ? 
How many would have rejected a system on which 
its advocates could not agree ! While each man 
was building up his own system, the magnificent 
prospect of Christ's kingdom would have been lost 
amidst the diversity of opinions. If this spectacle 
is so injurious even to the established age of the 
Christian Church, how fatal had it been at its com- 
mencement ! But this danger it pleased God to ob- 
viate. And what prevented it was, that His will 
was not only conveyed in a book, on which the 
proud and captious could employ their reason, but 
embodied, likewise, in that system to which the 
meek and humble surrendered their hearts. Thus, 
by the teaching of apostolic men were they guided 
into the meaning of the apostles. "When there are 
such clear modes of proof," says Irenseus, 38 " we 
ought not to seek elsewhere for that certainty which 
the Church readily supplies, inasmuch as to it, as to 
an abundant storehouse, the apostles committed an 
ample supply of truth." This was the confidence 
which sustained the disciple of Polycarp among the 
barbarous Gauls to whom he witnessed. A few 
years later another voice replies from a different 
continent : " Would you have some further assur- 
ance respecting the doctrines of salvation ? Run 
through the apostolical Churches, still ruled by 
authorities established by the apostles themselves, 
where their authentic letters are read, and which 
seem, therefore, to utter their voice and to retain 
their presence. Are you near Achaia ? you can 
have recourse to Corinth. Do you border on Ma- 
cedonia? look at Thessalonica and Philippi. If you 
38 Iremeus, iii. 4. § i. 



TEST Of FUNDAMENTALS. 189 

can cross into Asia, you have Ephesus. Are you 
near Italy ? there is Rome." 39 

This was a decisive method of determining the 
meaning of Scripture, because there was no ques- 
tion what system was taught by these various 
Churches. And on this account it is that the 
Church of England has declared that the right 
meaning of holy Scripture, the real mind of God's 
Spirit, is that form of belief which was promulgated 
by those apostolical men whom our Lord employed 
to build up His kingdom. Her ministers are en- 
joined 40 not to teach any thing as the meaning of 
Scripture except that view of truth which had the 
consentient approbation of the ancient fathers : and 
even her laity are required to join in their declara- 
tions of essential doctrine ; for from them comes the 
creed which the church requires every man to re- 
ceive who is admitted into her communion. And 
this she requires, because so much as this was 
thought needful in that first age by those who had 
received instruction from the apostles; for since 
Christ's kingdom was to consist of men bound to- 
gether by that communion with the Church's Head 
which required that they should receive Him as 
their Saviour, it was needful that they should make 
some profession of their faith when they were ad- 
mitted into the ranks of them that believed. And 
this confession, 41 whether commanded by the apos- 

89 Tertullian. de Prses. § xxxvi. 

40 " Preachers shall see that they teach nothing in the con- 
gregation as to be religiously received and believed by the 
people, except what is accordant to the doctrine of the Old 
and New Testament, and what has been collected from that 
doctrine by the catholic fathers and ancient bishops." — Canons, 
1571. Wilkins, Concilia, iv. 267. 

41 The manner of making this confession we have from the 
story of Victorinus, as recorded by St. Augustine : — 

"When the hour was come for making profession ofhia 



190 THE FIVE EMPIRES. A.D. 100-200. 

ties, or appointed by those who followed in the first 
age, contained a declaration of belief in the three 
persons of the Godhead, in whose names they were 
to be baptised — in the reality of the Church, that 
kingdom of Christ which they desired to join — and 
of their confidence that the forgiveness of sins and 
a future hope might be obtained by the Christian 
covenant. These fundamental truths, which, under 
the name of the Apostles' Creed, our Church re- 
quires all worshippers to acknowledge, have been 
delivered down to us from the time when all who 
confessed them joined in one communion, and made 
up one spiritual kingdom. 

And how goodly was its advance ! Pass a hun- 
dred years from the time when the last apostle was 
taken away, and already the Church began to rise 
above the crumbling ruins of that empire which it 
was shortly to succeed. "We are but of yester- 
day," exclaimed the Christians, " and we have filled 
your whole realm, — your cities, islands, fortresses, 
municipalities — your councils, your very camps, 
your assemblies, your forum, — no where but in 
your temples are you alone." 42 

faith (which, at Rome, they who are about to approach to Thy 
grace, deliver from an elevated place in the sight of all the 
faithful, in a set form of words committed to memory), the 
presbyters offered Victorinus (as was done to such-as seemed 
likely, through bashfulness, to be alarmed) to make his pro- 
fession more privately ; but he chose rather to profess his 

salvation in the presence of the holy multitude When 

then he went up to make his profession, all, as they knew him, 
whispered his name one to another with the voice of congratu- 
lation. And who there knew him not ? And there ran a low 
murmur through all the mouths of the rejoicing multitude, 
'Victorinus! Victorinus!' Sudden was the burst of rapture, 
that they saw him ; suddenly were they hushed, that they might 
hear him. He pronounced the true faith with an excellent 
boldness ; and all wished to draw him into their very heart," 
&c. — Aug. Confessions, viii. § 5. 
^ Tert. Apol. § xxxvii. 



romes service to the church 191 

Such were the effects of Christ's presence with 
His Church in the day of its inward unity. This 
first century after the removal of the apostles, which 
was measured out by the successive lives of Poly- 
carp 43 and Irenaeus, 44 was its season of youth. Ig- 
norance and corruption must have existed in a com- 
munity surrounded by heathen darkness, and itself 
newly born out of the night of paganism ; yet there 
was a docility which accustomed men to walk quietly 
in the path which God had appointed, and an un- 
wavering assurance that the path was not mistaken. 
For as yet there was no doubt what was Christ's 
kingdom, and how men were to enter into communion 
with His mystic body. No Christian could doubt 
the authority of those whom the apostles had made 
rulers of the Churches, nor deny that holy Scrip- 
ture was rightly understood by those who had apos- 
tolic men for their instructors. Each man used his 
judgment to learn that system which was delivered, 
and not to discover for himself that system which 
would be best ; and t.herefove it was not difficult to 
agree. Men came to the Church not as objectors, 
but as disciples ; they learnt not by criticism, but 
by testimony, — not by reasoning respecting doc- 
trines, but by inquiry respecting facts. 

And in this course the Church was much bene- 
fited by that very greatness of the Roman empire, 
which might at first sight threaten to impede it. 
The internal peace which it produced among the 
various nations of the world, the opportunities of 
intercourse which it afforded, contributed to main- 
tain that unity of the faith which so greatly tended 
towards the growth of Christ's kingdom. As God's 
people of old time grew and multiplied under the 
shelter of Egyptian civilisation, so this fourth per- 
secuting empire did but foster the seed which it 

43 A.D. 68 to A.D. 167. * A.D. 120 to A.D. 202. 






192 



THE FIVE EMPIRES. 



A.D. 100-200. 



sought to extirpate. Prudentius, a Christian poet 
of the filth century, assigns this as the reason why 
that worldly kingdom should have been allowed to 
grow to such gigantic greatness : 

u For say, O Roman, why thy stern behest 
Sways the wide regions of the east and west ; 
Why nations in their tongue and faith diverse 
Bow to thy will, thy laws and speech rehearse : 
One city only and one people spread 
From Tagus' flood to far Himalas' head ; 45 
Why, but to hush the jarring sounds of war, 
And smooth the pathway for Messiah's car, 
That numerous tribes, by laws and arts combined, 
Might to the cross submit their captive mind." 46 

45 When Prudentius speaks of those whom " Ganges alit," 
he must have referred rather to the influence than the empire 
of Rome. 

46 Adapted from Prudentius in Sym. ii. § 5. 



ftflM-frfrft, 




□ a 

Ii 




An ancient monument in the catacombs at Rome. Tha house'is the Church, vide 
p. 150 ; the seven lights refer to Rev. i. 20, or iv. 5. The balance refers to the 
final judgment. The figure enrolled like a mummy is indicative of the resurrec- 
tion of the body. The fish is the well-known emblem of the Christian, either, 
according to Tertullian, because he is saved by baptism, or because the letters 
which form its Greek name are the initial letters of our Lord's titles. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

<£avlp Sttifematfts. ^tontamtjs antr Nobaifan. 

PRINCIPLE OF SCHISM MONTANUS TERTULLIAN NOVA- 

TIAN STATE OF CHRISTIANS DURING THE DECIAN PER- 
SECUTION PURITANS PACIAN CHRIST'S KINGDOM RE- 
UNITED. 

Ne let vain words bewitch thy manly heart, 
Ne devilish thoughts dismay thy constant spright 

In heavenly mercies hast not thou a part 1 

Why shouldst thou then despair, that chosen art ? 
Where justice grows, there grows eke greater grace, 

The which doth quench the brand of hellish smart. 
And that accurs : d handwriting doth deface. 

Spenser. 

Such was the victory of Christ's Church in the 
century which followed the death of the apostles. 
Error and ignorance were indeed found in it, be- 
cause ignorant and erring men were continually 
entering its ranks; but these evils took no hold 
upon it, — they were continually purged off as foreign 
to its nature, and inconsistent with its transmitted 
principles of truth. But, besides these outward 
evils, there arose divisions which had their root in 
the Church's inner nature, and therefore must appear 
from time to time, so long as she continues in this 
militant state. For heresy, however fatal, is an out- 
ward and temporary disorder; but schism, however 
trivial, is an inward and lasting ill. 

In modern times schism has often been but one 
form of insubordination, and has been frequently 



194 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

wedded to that political feeling which discerns that 
the best engine against governments is to destroy the 
religion which sustains them. But such was not the 
nature or object of schism in ancient days. It arose 
before the Christian faith had found favour with 
senates and rulers, and had a deeper and purer root. 
For since Christians are united not merely, like the 
dwellers in one land, by a territorial limit, but also 
by their allegiance to a common faith, they are liable 
to differences, according as some men forget the 
common principle which they profess, and others 
carry it to an unnatural extent. Even before the 
persecutions under the Emperor Antoninus, 1 in which 
Polycarp and Pothinus had suffered, the principles 
of the cross had been forgotten by many who pro- 
fessed the faith of the Crucified, and the kingdom 
of Christ contained citizens whose lives shewed that 
they were not obedient subjects. Thence arose the 
wish for some stricter bond, for some more certain 
principle of anion, which might constrain the obe- 
dient and exclude the careless. A body less exten- 
sive than the body of Christ — a society less nume- 
rous than that which He feeds with sacraments and 
has bought with His blood — a kingdom more con- 
centrated than His universal empire — a Church 
within a Church, less promiscuous than that mer- 
ciful home, the asylum of the weak, the timid, and 
the penitent; — this has, in all ages, been the wish of 
earnest and ardent Christians, except when guided 
by an unchangeable faith, or tempered by an over- 
powering humility, or when a large insight into life 
has extended the sphere of their observation. 

Such was the temper of the first dissenters, — the 
enthusiastic Montanus and the austere Novatian. 
They were schismatics, not heretics ; for they were 

1 a.d. 167 and a.d. 177. 



A.D. 172. THE FIRST DISSENTERS. . 195 

seditious members, not open enemies, of Christ's 
kingdom, — they rebelled against the Church, with- 
out abandoning her creed : not that even they cast off 
the authority of bishops, 2 nor denied the necessity ot 
sacraments ; for these things during fifteen centuries 
after Christ were never called in question by any 
who professed themselves Christians. 

The first of these separatists, Montanus, who 
arose about seventy years after St. John's death, 3 
thought himself guided by the especial influence of 
that Spirit which our Lord had promised to His 
disciples. The presence of the Comforter was not, 
he said, a general indwelling in the Church at large, 
but its peculiar abode in such favoured persons as 
himself. In dependence on this conviction, he pre- 
sumed to give laws to those who gathered round 
him in his native Phrygia. Many believed him to 
possess really the power of prophecy. His most 
celebrated follower was Tertullian; the most elo- 
quent of the Latin fathers, a man of stern and self- 
denying temper, whose able writings in defence of 
the Gospel did not prevent him, any more than our 
own countryman Law, from being beguiled in his 
later years by the visions of an inferior understand- 
ing. Thus have the greatest minds been not unfre- 
quently a prey to the delusions of mysticism. One 
reason is, that in the depths of our mental constitution 
there are dark and mysterious secrets, over which 
superficial observers glide with a contented and in- 
curious facility, but which men of searching intel- 
lects can slightly discern, but cannot penetrate. Such 
weakness casts a stronger light upon that law of our 
moral nature, which makes humility the necessary 
condition for discovering truth. 

Thus did there arise a faction within the king- 

a Sozoiaen, viii. 19. 3 a.d. 172. Eusebius, v. 16. 



196 THE FIVE EMPIRES. A.D. 172, 

dom of Christ, during the first century after the days 
of the apostles, which claimed to itself to be the sole 
guardian of the creed, and to be the inheritor of the 
Church's name and promises. But though it took 
its name from Montanus, and he was believed to be 
the inspired director of its course, yet the real secret 
of its existence was, that its members claimed to be 
men who acted truly upon those rules which all 
Christians professed to reverence ; that, in proof of 
it, they exercised extraordinary self-denial ; and that 
no gross sin had stained (as they asserted) their bap- 
tismal purity. A single gross sin was enough* to 
exclude men from this select body. Many practices, 
which other Christians thought allowable, were by 
them renounced. They enjoined greater reserve in 
dress and in manners ; and no one who was engaged 
in second marriage could be admitted to their 
ranks. 

If this exclusive spirit ad not been grounded 
in some deep principle, it would soon have passed 
away, when it was found, contrary to the expecta- 
tions of Montanus, that no manifestations of that 
especial power to which he pretended could be 
proved to continue with his sect. 4 Yet it main- 
tained its ground, and shewed the real cause of its 
vitality by its union with another body of malcon- 
tents, who discovered themselves eighty years later 
in Christ's kingdom. After the time of Antoninus, 
the Christians had enjoyed a long period of compa- 
rative tranquillity, during which there was little to 
put the reality of their principles to the test. At 
length, when their numbers had mightily increased, 
while ancient discipline and the strictness of early 
faith had suffered melancholy decay, the persecution 

4 The argument of Asterius Urbanus against the Montanists, 
Eus. v. 16, p. 231. 



A.D. 250. DECAY OF DISCIPLINE. 197 

of Decius burst upon them like a thunder-storm. 5 
The Church contained many who, living in the midst 
of a heathen population, had in heart participated 
in heathen crimes. Could it be expected that those 
who would not live for Christ, should be ready on 
a sudden to die for His name? Nothing but the 
strictness of a self-denying life could prepare men 
for the crown of martyrdom. Many doubtless were 
found watching, and gave proofs of a faith of which, 
in these days of rest and ease, we have no example. 
But the martyr Cyprian gives this picture of the 
Church at large : " Men's study has been to increase 
their property; they have been swallowed up by 
covetousness, forgetting the duty of believers, and 
the example of the apostolic age. Bishops have been 
without devotion, and priests without sincerity ; their 
works without mercy, their manners without disci- 
pline. Marriages with the heathen have corrupted 
the members of Christ. Not only have oaths been 
frequent, but even perjuries. Men in office have 
been proud, evil-speaking, and contentious. Many 
bishops, whose voice and example ought to have been 
a warning, despising their divine office, leaving their 
post and deserting their people, have wandered forth 
in search of worldly gain." 6 When the time of trial 
came upon such men, how immediate must be their 
downfal ! And so it proved. " They did not wait," 
says the same holy man, " till they might be sum- 
moned to deny, or brought by force before the altars 
of incense. Many w r ere vanquished before the con- 
flict, and fell before the fight. They did not even 
leave themselves the opportunity of appearing re- 
luctant. They ran willingly to the Forum, they hast- 
ened spontaneously to destruction, as though it had 
long been their desire, as though they were embra- 

* a.d. 250. 6 De Lapsis. 

S.2 



198 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

cing an opportunity which they had always coveted. 
What shall I say of those whom the magistrates had 
to defer, because evening prevented their sacrifice 
— who even entreated that their ruin might not be 
delayed ? How can such men pretend that they were 
compelled to sin, when they rather put compulsion 
on their seducers?" 7 

Such was the general picture. But there were 
some whose spirits were stirred within them at the 
common degeneracy. Among these was Novatian, 
a distinguished presbyter of the Roman Church. 
His course had been one well fitted for the deve- 
lopment of an extraordinary spirit. Brought up a 
gentile, he had sought among the schools of philo- 
sophy 8 for the resolution of those doubts which 
exercised the minds of reflecting heathens. But he 
had sought in vain from philosophy what philoso- 
phy could not supply. Thus circumstanced, he had 
been afflicted by a mental disease, either common 
insanity or the influence of an evil spirit, from which 
he was relieved through the Church's office by exor- 
cism. 9 His superior promise is afterwards attested 
by his ordination — a privilege not allowed in com- 
mon to those who, like him, had been baptised in 
sickness, and who were therefore presumed to have 
delayed their conversion. After his ordination, he 
declined the common duties of the ministry, and 
betook himself to "another pursuit," — holy thought, 
namely, and ascetic mortification. 

From this state he was called by those who, feel- 
ing or professing similar views, formed themselves 
into that exclusive party to which the evils of the 
time gave occasion. Could they unite again with 
men whose ready renunciation of Christ proved the 
insincerity of their allegiance ? Was this the Lord's 

7 Cyprian de Lapsis, p. 171. 

8 Cyprian, Ep. 52. 9 Euseb. vi. 43 



PURITANS. 199 

kingdom, so magnificently portrayed in ancient pro- 
phecy ? Was this the host, " terrible as an army 
with banners," — this body of weak friends and con- 
cealed enemies? It was impossible, 10 they main- 
tained, for those who had fallen so readily, to be 
again received among the soldiers of Christ. God 
might, indeed, pardon, and Christ might hereafter 
accept them, because washed by His blood ; but to 
receive them into the Church would be to forfeit its 
claim to be Christ's kingdom, the city of God here 
below. 

Thus was a division again made in the body of 
the Church. The Novatians formed a distinct com- 
munion, a Church within the Church, adhering to 
the same faith and order, and considering the same 
sacraments to be the appointed means of grace, but 
confining Christ's kingdom to those who, since their 
baptism, were supposed to have been free from open 
sin. They too had their stricter 11 life to oppose to the 
less precise enactments of the Church Catholic ; and 
the attractive appearance of a communion of con- 
sistent Christians, and the name of Puritans, gained 
them many adherents. Why did they forget that 
the Gospel-net had included bad as well as good 
within its folds, and that it must leaven the whole 
lump of this wide-spread world ? Did the fifth em- 
pire-lose its title to a kingdom, any more than the 
four preceding, because traitors were at times found 
among its subjects? Did they not know that human 
motives are known to the Searcher of hearts alone, 
and that here, therefore, no care will secure the 
Church's purity ? This exclusive spirit had a neces- 
sary tendency to produce pride and self-sufficiency 
in themselves, while their refusal to extend the ordi- 
nances of the Church to so many, whom they still 

10 Socrates, i. 10. Parian, iii. § 1. 

11 Sozomen, vii. 18. 



200 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

encouraged to hope for salvation, was not unlikely 
to lead men to look for other grounds of confidence 
than the Spirit's help and the blood of the Re- 
deemer. 

Recommended, however, by its appearance of 
sanctity, this sect extended itself widely ; and it took 
especial root in Phrygia, 12 where it united with the 
remnant of the Montanists. 13 It gained great head 
likewise in the luxurious city of Constantinople, 
where, after a time, it put on a more court-like garb, 
and its bishops became favourites with senators 14 
and emperors. But the especial ground of its in- 
crease was, that the Church was suffering at this 
season under the distractions of heresy. This was 
just the period when it was rent by those divisions 
respecting our Lord's nature which were introduced 
by the Arians. Had it been possible to point to a 
united communion, existing without difference or 
division throughout the world, the petty pretensions 
of the scattered Novatians would have lost that hold 
on men's imaginations, from which they derived all 
their strength. When the Arian heresy, therefore, 
had in a measure passed away, or at all events had 
been driven without the Church's gates, the Nova- 
tians rapidly declined. Small as were their compa- 
rative numbers, they could not escape inward divi- 
sions. 15 They fell before those arguments, drawn 
from the unity of Christ's kingdom, which are so 
forcibly directed against them by Pacian, bishop ot 
Barcelona. They had attempted to shew, by an 
appeal to reasoning, that the characteristics of the 
Church were found only with themselves ; the body 
of Christ,' 6 they argued, could consist of none save 
the pure. He met them by an appeal to history 

12 Socrates, v. 21, 22. l3 Pacian, ii. § 3. 

14 Socrates, vi. 22. 15 Socrates, v. 22. 

10 Ep. iii. § 2. 



ANTIDOTE TO SCHISM. 201 

and to facts. He shewed them, that a system which 
was historically false could not be logically true. 
" My name," he said, " is Christian ; my surname 
is Catholic." " Did no one till the time of Decius 
understand the meaning of our Lord?" 17 " Th° 
Church of Christ," 18 you tell me, " is a people born 
of water and of the Holy Ghost. Well then, who 
has closed from me the divine fountain ? Who lias 
deprived me of the gift of the Holy Ghost ? Have 
not we the living water which springs from Christ, 
and is it not you who have withdrawn yourselves 
from the perpetual fountain of your spiritual life ? 
The Spirit does not leave the Church, the great 
mother of mankind. From whence did you gain it ? 
Whence had your own people the gift of the Holy 
Ghost, save through the medium of her appointed 
ministers ?" 

He then points to the fulfilment of ancient pro- 
phecy, as illustrated in the wide dominion of the 
Church. Number, if you can, the hosts of Catho- 
lics, 19 and tell the swarms of our people. I appeal 
not merely to the universal belief of every country, 
but to that which meets you in the adjoining cities. 
How many do you meet of ours, yourself solitary ? 
And can the seed of Abraham, more numerous than 

'" Ep. i. § 4. > 8 Ep. iii. § 2, 3. 

19 A friend suggests, that since there are some persons who, 
notwithstanding the example set them in the Prayer-book, 
identify the words Catholic and Romanist, it is necessary to 
observe, that in the time of Pacian the errors of popery had 
not appeared, or at least had not been formed into a system ; 
and that the Reformed Catholics of the Church of England 
claim to be in communion with those of the primitive Church, 
from whose doctrines and order they consider the Roman 
Catholics to have departed. Surely it is deeply to be regretted 
that any members of the Church Catholic in this country should 
be so ignorant, or so inconsistent, as virtually to declare that 
they are not Christians, by sanctioning the Romanists in their 
exclusive claim to the name of Catholics. 



202 THE FIVE EMPIRES. 

the stars or than the sand of the shore, be verified 
in your scanty numbers ? * In thee shall all nations 
of the earth be blessed.' Is this fulfilled by Nova- 
tian ? Surely our Lord is not so ill supplied with 
followers, nor was it for so small a body that He 
shed His blood. Come, then, my brethren, behold 
the Church of God enlarging her tents, stretching 
right and left her stakes and cords ; and understand 
that God's name must be glorified from the rising 
to the setting of the sun." 20 

These reasonings for a time prevailed. The sepa- 
rating parties, after existing till the end of the fourth 
century, gradually melted again into the unity of the 
Church, and renewed their allegiance to the spiritual 
kingdom. Thus was division checked, to re-appear 
after the corruption and tyranny of Rome had so 
completely broken up the Church's concord, that 
such arguments could no longer be adduced with 
equal truth, or accepted with equal confidence. 

80 Ep. iii. 25, 27. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

X$%t ©f)ttvt!)'s Uictorg — dTonstantme— ®i\t jFt'ftlj 
itmgtrom. 

KEIGN OF DIOCLETIAN MARCELLUS PERSECUTION MAR- 
tyrs in palestine constantine vision of the 

cross the worldly power chosen to behold it — 

Christ's kingdom established. 

And when slie list pour forth her larger spright, 
She would command the hasty sun to stay, 

Or backward turn his course from heaven's height : 
Sometimes great hosts of men she could dismay ; 
Dryshod to pass, she parts the floods in tway. 

Spenser. 

And now the time was come for a great change in 
the system of the world. By sure, though unseen 
degrees, the grain of mustard-seed had arisen, till its 
size promised to overshadow the earth. In the long 
interval of rest which followed the Decian persecu- 
tion, 1 the Church of Christ had so increased in influ- 
ence and numbers, that the heathen looked upon it 
no less with fear than astonishment. By the end of 
the third century, it was manifest that nothing but 
some mighty effort could prevent the cross from tri- 
umphing over the altars of paganism. If the blood- 
cemented fabric of heathen worship was to endure, 
it must be by the destruction of a system too formi- 
dable to be any longer slighted. 

At this season it pleased God, who makes storms 
as well as sunshine the ministers of His will, to 
1 a.d. 250. 



204 THE FIVE EMPIRES. A.D. 285. 

set a prince over the Roman empire, whose sagacity 
enabled him to employ all the resources of human 
policy for the overthrow of the Church. The Em- 
peror Diocletian 2 had given new life to the vast 
body over which he reigned, and his wise plans of 
worldly government made him a second Augustus, — 
a refounder of the Roman state. One thing only 
seemed to him to be wanting. What his heart de- 
sired, was the restoration of the ancient system 3 of 
his country; and of this, its original superstitions 
were an essential part. For they were bound up 
with that which had been one secret of Rome's 
ascendency — the unshaken confidence in a fate 
which watched over the eternity of the empire. 
But as their restoration could not be effected by 
reason, it must be accomplished by force. Now, 
then, came the conflict which was to decide the 
history of the world. For a little hour the victory 
seemed in suspense — while paganism and the Church 
were entwined in the death-struggle together. The 
eyes of all men were on the event ; for the fall of 
Dagon was not as of old, in darkness and silence, — 
it was acted on the middle stage of earth — its scene- 
plot w r as the Roman empire. The Church of God 
had emerged from Babylonish bondage, and flourished 
under Persian protection; it had spread through 
the channels of Grecian civilisation, and now it was 
to exact homage from the majesty of Rome; it had 
trampled on the pride of the Stoics, and contemned 
the alluring arts of Epicurus; and now it defied the 
swords of thirty legions, and the arm which swayed 
from Euphrates to the ocean. 

The Emperor Diocletian was long withheld by 
feelings of humanity from commencing that struggle, 
which was to end in the establishment of the king- 
dom of Christ. At length, his affection to the 
8 a.d. 285. Gibbon, c. 13. 3 Euseb. viii. 17. 



A.D. 298. DIOCLETIAN. 205 

ancient system was reinforced by the arguments of 
his son-in-law Galerius, who was addicted, not only 
by policy, but by hereditary 4 affection, to the old 
superstition. Galerius found the old man the more 
ready to admit his sanguinary councils, because he 
had lately felt himself rebuked by the presence of 
some Christian officers of his army or household. 
While he sacrificed, some attendant Christians signed 
themselves with the cross, in token that they bore 
no part in the impiety ; and the impure spirits, whose 
aid the heathen sought, and often really obtained, 
were chased away by the holy token. 5 Inflamed 
with anger, Diocletian had required all who bore 
offices in the court or army to take part in heathen 
sacrifices ; — an order which induced many Christians 
to abandon their hopes of preferment, and retire to 
private stations ; while some, not allowed this escape, 
died as martyrs to the faith. 6 The connexion of 
heathen superstition with the public events of life, 
often made a banquet or a festival the decisive 
moment when such self-sacrifice was suddenly re- 
quired. Thus, Marcellus, who had risen to the 
office of centurion, was celebrating the emperor's 
birthday, when he was called upon to take part in 
an idolatrous service, from which the soldiery had 
hitherto been exempt. 7 But this brave man, though 
knowing that the result must be the loss of his 
office, and probably of his life, hesitated not between 
God and mammon. " Taking off his military belt, 
* I am the soldier,' he said, ' of Christ, the eternal 
King.' Then throwing down his arms, and the vine- 
bough, his emblem of office, ' From this time,' he 
exclaimed, ' I am no soldier of your emperors : your 
gods of wood and stone I refuse to adore, for they 

4 Lact. de M. P. xi. 5 Ibid. 

6 Euseb. viii. 4. 7 Ruinart's Act. Mart. a.d. 298. 

T 



206 



THE FIVE EMPIRES. 



A.D. 298. 



are deaf and dumb idols. If such is the condition of 
soldiers, 8 that they are compelled to offer sacrifice 
to the heathen gods and to their emperors, I lay- 
down my vine and belt, I renounce my standard, I 
refuse to serve.'" 

The execution of this undaunted soldier of Christ 
(at Tangier in Africa) Avas but a prelude to similar 
scenes, in which women, aged men, and striplings, 
were shortly to bear part. After his victory over 
the Persians, Galerius spent a winter with Diocletian 
in the palace at Nicomedia ; and the result of their 




Diocletian and Maximian in a consular progress : from an ancient medal.- 
This medal, which, like that figured on the opposite page, is clearly descrip- 
tive of a triumphal procession, has been supposed to record the last regular 
triumph of the masters of the world. But Cardinal Noris proves it to have 
been struck in a different -vear. 



8 These words evidently imply the new condition, at this 
time exacted from soldiers, and probably first exacted on the 
feast of the emperor's birthday, just as the decree against 
Christianity was afterwards published at Easter. 



a.d. 303. 



LAST ROMAN TRIUMPH. 



207 



secret consultations 9 was, that the aged prince at 
length abandoned his irresolution, and agreed to 
quench the flame of Christianity by the blood of its 
professors. In the very same year, 10 therefore, which 
witnessed the last Roman triumph — that insulting 
sign of contempt for the miseries of mankind — began 
the last and greatest persecution against the Christians. 




Gaieriua.from an ancient medal . 



The feast of the Roman god Terminus, 11 who 
presided over boundaries, had been selected to be 
the day beyond which Christianity should be un- 
known. ■ With its earliest dawn, the splendid church 
which was built in so conspicuous a part of Nico- 
media as even to overhang the palace, was unex- 
pectedly surrounded by the soldiery, who burst into 
it — curious to witness under what shape was wor- 
shipped the Christian God — seized the copies of the 
Scriptures, and whatever else was to be found, and 



* a.d. 303. 

11 Lact. de M. P. xii. 



Lact. de M. P. xvii. 



208 THE FIVE EMPIRES. A.D. 303. 

demolished the building. The Christians, just pre- 
paring to celebrate the holy season of Easter, 12 were 
overwhelmed by the sudden appearance of decrees, 
which required the destruction of their churches, the 
surrender of all copies of the Scriptures, and de- 
prived themselves of all the rights of citizens, and of 
the protection of the law. Other enactments im- 
mediately followed, by which, first the bishops and 
clergy, and then all private Christians, were enjoined 
to sacrifice to idols, on pain of confiscation, imprison- 
ment, torture, and death. 

And now began a scene such as the world has 
never since witnessed, even in those days when po- 
pish tyranny dyed itself red in the blood of martyrs. 
The horrors of that season are not to be estimated 
so much by the numbers who perished, though the 
lowest computation would make them exceed fifteen 
thousand persons, 13 as by the attendant circumstances 
of barbarity and outrage. At various times in the 
history of the Reformation, the persecuted party re- 

12 Eus. viii. 17, p. 406. 

13 Palestine is 156 miles long, and 46 broad. (Reland's 
Palestine.) This would give 7176 square miles, or less than 
Saa^ part of the Roman empire, which contained 1,600,000 
square miles. (Gibbon, i. p. 46.) In Palestine, Eusebius num- 
bers up ninety-two persons put to death. He does not say, 
though probably he may have meant, that no persons perished 
except those with whose name he was acquainted. He ex- 
pressly mentions other places [the Thebaid] where the persecu- 
tion was far more bloody than in Palestine. Taking Palestine, 
however, as our standard, and excluding one quarter of the 
empire as having been comparatively free from persecution, 
the number of martyrs would come to nearly fifteen thousand 
four hundred. It is true that the persecution lasted longer in 
Palestine than elsewhere, but we are nowhere told it was more 
bloody ; and nearly half the martyrs who perished there were 
put to death in one year, as though to try the effect of such 
severity in striking terror into the rest. The same experiment 
was probably made in other places, and equally without effect. 



A.b, 303. LAST PAGAN PERSECUTION. . 209 

pelled force by force ; and when they were defeated, 
much blood was shed without mercy. But these 
massacres, where the conquerors destroyed those 
whom they feared, or took revenge on those whom 
they hated, were but the ordinary display of men's 
violent passions. The deliberate selection of one 
after another out of an unresisting population ; their 
public exposure, in cold blood, to every kind of ig- 
nominy and torture, till human nature sunk under 
the struggle, — this resembles rather the ferocity of 
those savage beasts whom the persecutors employed 
as their ministers. Eusebius, who has related in de- 
tail the sufferings of ninety-two martyrs within the 
narrow limits of Palestine, where he was living at 
the time, speaks of two hundred and twenty-seven 
men, who were sentenced to its mines after some 
bodily mutilation. 14 Many had lost an eye, many a 
foot, or other parts of their body ; and for years did 
men survive in the Church with these tokens of their 
sincerity. Neither rank nor sex was an exemption. 
Christian women 15 were subjected but to more in- 
tolerable insult ; and persons of wealth and of the 
highest birth perished in the midst of tortures. Eu- 
sebius, professing to speak only of the clergy of the 
principal cities, 16 mentions eleven 17 bishops in his 
own provinces and the nearer part of Egypt, besides 

14 De Mar. Pal. viii. 15 Eus. de Mar. Pal. v. 

16 Eus-. viii. 13. 

17 If Mr. Gibbon's usual sagacity had not been extinguished 
by his hatred to Christianity, he could not have been guilty of 
so gross an error as to say, that ' ' from the pen of Eusebius it 
may be collected, that only nine bishops were punished with 
death ;" cap. xvi. ii. 493. For, first, Eusebius does not pro- 
fess to mention all the bishops martyred, but only such as pre- 
sided over chief cities ; viii. 13. Secondly, Eusebius expressly 
mentions twelve, and not nine, cases of this kind. Thirdly, it 
is obvious that Eusebius, who does not profess to give a com- 
plete list even of the bishops martyred in chief cities, was con- 



210 THE FIVE EMPIRES. A.B. 303. 

the Bishop of Nicomedia, who perished in the per- 
secution ; and those who, after suffering tortures, 
were allowed to live, were degraded to the most 
menial offices." 18 

Meantime all the churches were destroyed through- 
out the wide limits of the Roman empire ; and to a 
superficial observer it might have appeared that the 
religion of half mankind had been suppressed in a 
moment. So thought the emperor, and in his pride 
recorded his victory in monumental inscriptions, which 
have survived as witnesses of his defeat. His haughty 
boast was, that " the name of Christians, the destroy- 
ers of the republic, is abolished, and their supersti- 
tion every where destroyed." 19 

fining himself to the neighbourhood which he himself inha- 
bited ; for except Nicomedia, the capital, every bishop of whom 
he speaks belonged to Syria or Egypt. 

Equally unfounded is the assertion, that Adauctus was " the 
only person of rank or distinction who appears to have suffered 
death during this persecution ;" Gib. § xvi. vol. ii. 480. It is 
sufficient to mention Philomorus and Phileas, Eus. viii. 9 ; the 
governor of the town in Phrygia, id. viii. 1 1 ; five women of 
noble birth, id viii. 12 ; Appianus, Eus. de Mar. Pal. iv. And 
the enumeration of Euseoius does not profess to go beyond 
Palestine. 

18 Eus. de Mar. Pal. xii. 

19 a This inscription may be read," says Baronius, " on a 
magnificent column at Clunia, in Spain" [near Aranda, on 
the Douro] : 

" ' Diocletian surnamed Jupiter, Maximian surnamed Her- 
cules, Csesars Augustuses — in memory of the augmentation of 
the Roman empire, both in the East and West, and of the 
utter extinction of the name of Christians, who were over- 
throwing the Republic.' 

"Again; another inscription in the same place has this 
meaning : 

" ' Diocletian Csesar Augustus — in memory of the adoption 
of Galerius in the East, of the universal extinction of the 
superstition of Christ, and of the extension of the worship of 
the gods.' 

" The same thing may be read at Arevacum in Spain, on 
various columns." — Baronius, iii. ann. 304. § ix. 



A.D. 311. MARTYRS. 211 

Even Constantius, who, with the title of Caesar, 
ruled under the emperor in Gaul and Britain, joined 
in the destruction of the Christian temples ; though 
that more precious temple of the Holy Ghost, the 
bodies of Christians, his humanity forbade him to 
violate. 20 Even in Britain, however, we read of the 
martyrdom of St. Alban ; while in other parts of the 
world, the achievements of many distinguished mar- 
tyrs are recorded, — as of St. Agnes, of Adauctus, Phi- 
lomorus, and Phileas, who were celebrated for their 
rank ; and of Lucian of Antioch, and Pamphiius of 
Tyre, who were known for their abilities and learning. 

In the East the persecution continued, with slight 
intermission, during a space of ten years. Towards 
the end of that period a famine and pestilence were 
added to the other evils which afflicted Palestine ; 
and the kindness of the Christians towards the sick 
and destitute 21 induced the heathen to respect a faith 
which could render men as charitable and indulgent 
towards their brethren, as they had shewn themselves 
patient and unbending in their Master's service. 

But the time was come when God would avenge 
His own elect, 22 though He had borne long. Diocle- 
tian and Galerius were now removed from the stage ; 
the first had for some time resigned the sovereignty, 
the second was dead. Diocletian had divided the 
empire into four parts, each entrusted to a separate 
ruler, the elder having the chief place ; and at this 
time the East was governed by Maximin and Lici- 
nius, Italy and Africa by Maxentius, while Constan- 
tine had succeeded his father Constantius in Gaul 
and Britain. But these several chiefs were not on 
friendly terms with one another, and were secretly 
looking round for means by which they might secure 
themselves or destroy their rivals. Meanwhile the 
persecution had in great measure ceased, except in 

30 Lactant. de M. P. 21 Eus. ix. 8. 32 a.d. 311. 



212 THE FIVE EMPIRES. a.D. 311. 

the dominions of Maximin, who ruled over the south- 
eastern parts of the empire. But the discerning 
mind of Constantine, when considering from what 
quarter he should derive support, perceived some- 
thing in the Christian system which might not only 
be harmless to those who tolerated, but beneficial to 
those who protected it. The words of his friendly 
biographer, Eusebius, as well as his own subsequent 
conduct, would lead us to suppose him actuated 
rather by an immediate sense of worldly advantage 
than by the expectation of spiritual good. 23 It was 
avowedly when considering how he might gain sup- 
port for his military designs, that he " began to con- 
sider what god he could enrol as a champion on his 
side. In his inquiries, the thought arose, how many, 
who had before grasped the sovereign power, and 
had given their affiance and offered sacrifices to the 
gods of the heathen, had failed, after being flattered 
with delusive hopes." 

Constantine may afterwards have attained to 
deeper and better thoughts, but in this manner was 
he first determined to implore succour from the 
Christian's God. And thus was the spectacle again 
brought round, of which in the days of Nebuchad- 
nezzar there had been a short-lived example. There 
had then been the promise of an union between the 
majesty of human rule, and the supremacy of God's 
dominion, — the chief of human beings calling on his 
subjects to join with him in honouring that God 
whose prophet he had learnt to reverence. In the 
hour of that first monarchy's highest ascendency, 
it had touched upon the Church of God, and such 
sense of inferiority had been the consequence. It 
had seemed as though the two might ally; as though 
that human system, which had so long dissevered 
itself from the religious principle, had met it again 
23 Vita Constan. i. 27. 



A..D. 312. WORLD AGAIN SEEKS THE CHURCH. 2 13 

and recognised its master ; as though Noah's predic- 
tion, which spoke of the wide-spreading power of 
man as taking up its abode in God's Church, was at 
once to be consummated. But such meeting was 
but for a season. It was not given to that empire, 
which had been originally reared by the children of 
Ham, to be the immediate prototype of Messiah's 
kingdom. The prophecies had gathered themselves 
into shape and order, but they passed away for one 
of the days of heaven. And now, when a thousand 
years had elapsed, and when those empires had 
run their course, which were announced at the pre- 
vious era, the same combination of circumstances re- 
appears. But now the world's dominion has centered 
in the race of Japheth, ere it comes in contact with 
that spiritual principle which had been enshrined in 
the family of Shem. And, as at the former epoch, 
it is the earthly power which requires the Church's 
aid. Nebuchadnezzar found contentment from the 
Jewish prophet ; and so the world-pervading might 
of Christianity is invoked by an emperor who feels 
how hollow and unreal a security is the purple of 
Rome. The Babylonish monarch, the foremost man 
of that era at which the first empire came to its 
height, and from which the course of the three fol- 
lowing was distinctly viewed, is himself chosen to 
behold the vision which foreshadows the course of 
God's • coming providence. And this analogy gives 
great confirmation to a circumstance which historical 
evidence distinctly testifies, that when God's deal- 
ings had an end, and the destined career of the four 
empires was completed, it was, in like manner, to 
the possessor of the sovereign state that the vision 
was revealed, which indicated the nature of their 
consummation. For this was the declaration of the 
first Christian emperor of Rome, just as, a thousand 
years before, the vision of its greatness had mixed 
with the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar. " As I was 



214 



THE FIVE EMPIRES. 



A.D. 312. 



meditating, ' says Constantino, 24 " on my situation, 
and imploring God's help, this wonderful vision was 
presented to me. Mid-day being a little past, I saw 
with these eyes, in that part of the heaven just above 
the sun, the figure of a cross of light, and with it 
these words, By this prevail. And when I much 
doubted, Christ appeared to me the selfsame night 
in a dream, and ordered me to form a standard like 
that which I had seen, and to employ it as my de- 
fence against my enemies." 25 

By whatever means this intimation was conveyed, 
Constantine yielded it prompt obedience. He took 
the cross as his standard in his wars against his vari- 
ous opponents. One by one they fell before him. 
After conquering Maxentius, 26 and thus becoming 
master of Italy and all the west, he was opposed to 
Licinius, who in like manner had united all the east 
under his power. As Constantine appealed to the 
God of Christians, so did Licinius to the heathen 
powers. After conquering Maximin, Licinius had 
in some degree renewed the persecution of the Chris- 
tians. 27 And now he was about to measure himself 
against the champion whom the God of battles had 
raised up for their support. " This hour," he ex- 
claimed, " shall decide which of us has been in error. 28 
It shall be umpire between our gods, and Him whom 
our adversary honours." 29 So, too, felt Constantine. 
The standard of the Christian faith was guarded by 
an especial band of soldiers, and committed to the 
care of a chosen warrior. 30 Wherever it appeared, 
the enemy were scattered in flight. But the em- 
peror's attention was especially drawn to the cir- 
cumstance, that the chosen standard-bearer had no 
sooner, from cowardice, resigned his trust, than he 
fell a victim to the fate he sought to avoid. 31 Con- 

24 a.d. 312. Vita Cons. i. 28. » Ibid. i. 29. 

26 a.d. 313. 2 ? Vita Cons. ii. 2. » a.d. 323. 

29 Vita Cons. ii. 5. «> lb. ii. 7, 8. 31 Ibid. ii. 9. 



a.d. 323. 



THE CHURCH S STANDARD. 



215 



stantine's victory was complete ; and while it made 
him the sole head of the Roman world, it determined 
the still more important point, that Christianity was 
to be the established belief of the empire. 

Henceforth, then, with one short exception, we 
see its princes bringing their power and honour into 
the Church of Christ. Constantino declared, that 
while he recognised those bishops who had authority 
from God for the Church's inward conduct, he felt 
that, for its outward protection, he also had a like 
episcopal or superintending power. 32 Some time, 
however, expired before the might of human society 




JThe Labarum.— Constantine in the ship of the commonwealth, rowed by an angel, 
carrying the labarum.or standard of his Christian profession, in his hand. It con- 
sists of the two Greek letters X and R [P], with which the name of Christ begins. 
The phoenix on his hand indicates him a refounder of the Roman state From an 
ancient coin.] 

32 Vita Cons iv. 24. 



216 



THE FIVE EMPIRES. 



A.D. 323. 



could do its work in rendering full homage to the 
institution of God. Not till towards the end of this 
century were the forms of paganism finally superseded 
by the Church of Christ. Meanwhile the fourth 
empire had not done all its work. The Church had 
grown up within it till her lordly boughs had over- 
topped the decaying bulwarks of the dungeon which 
threatened her destruction. But still the mouldering 
fabric had some service to render towards the immor- 
tal plant which had overpowered it, and then its relics 
must be scattered towards the winds of heaven. 




Labarum, as seen in the monuments of private persons; from the tomb of 
Marcianus at Rome. He died a.d. 355. Vide Baronius, torn. iii. anno 312 ; and 
Bosio, Roma Sottenanea, p. 553. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

€%e ©f)ttrtf)*si>stem cementeD. ®i)e dEm&s. 

INTERVAL OF TRANQUILLITY ARIAN CONTROVERSY CON- 

STANTINE VAIN EFFORT TO OBVIATE DISCUSSION COUN- 
CIL SUMMONED AT NICE — ARIANS SILENCED THEIR PO- 
LITICAL INTRIGUES — THEODOSIUS COUNCIL OF CONSTAN- 
TINOPLE APPROACH OF BARBARIANS — IMPENDING DE- 
STRUCTION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE ITS FINAL HOMAGE TO 

THE FIFTH EMPIRE CLOSE OF ANCIENT HISTORY. 

Still glides the stream, and shall not cease to glide ; 

The form remains, the function never dies ; 

While we the brave, the mighty, and the wise, 
We men, who in our morn of youth defied 

The elements, must vanish ; be it so, — 
Enough if something from our hands have power 
To live, and act, and serve the future hour; 

And if, as toward the silent tomb we go, 
Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower. 

We feel that we are greater than we know. 

Wordsworth. 

Constantine's greatest service to the Church has 
been said to be that, by assembling the first general 
council at Nice, he afforded it an opportunity for 
laying down fixed rules of doctrine and discipline. 
If this was the judgment of Epiphanius 1 but a few 
years after the death of Constantine, how much more 
strongly would the same truth have been impressed 
upon him, could he have foreseen the events which 
were coming on the world, — could he have known 
that the age of Constantine was to be followed by 

1 Quoted by Lardner, iv. 60. 
U 



218 THE FIVE EMPIRES. a.D. 323. 

that mighty overthrow which ended the supremacy 
of Rome ! For then were the sun and moon dark- 
ened, the powers which rule this lower world were 
shaken from their seat, and the whole fabric of 
human society was changed. Those countries where 
the faith bore rule were occupied by savage tribes 
from the ends of the earth, and the very languages 
in which our Lord had heretofore been worshipped 
were done away. Henceforth Christendom was di- 
vided among so many nations, that never since that 
time have its bishops assembled with one consent, 
for the confirmation of truth or the removal of error; 
nor is it likely that they will again meet, till they are 
all gathered to render an account of their steward- 
ship before the Son of man. 

How important was it that this interval should be 
duly used, and that a fixed creed, and a concordant 
practice, should preserve the unity of the faith among 
the various and unconnected tribes of modern Chris- 
tendom ! The fifth empire was, indeed, to be unlike 
the other four: it needed no human hands to shape 
it; its principle was not worldly subjection, but com- 
munity of faith and worship. But how could it be 
an empire at all, what principles of truth or agree- 
ment could survive, unless, before the opportunity 
of conference had passed away, its principles had 
received that public acknowledgment of which our 
creeds are a lasting declaration ? These creeds had 
existed, indeed, before the time of Constantine ; they 
were built upon a basis as ancient as the first 
century ; but during times of persecution they could 
not be publicly declared, or receive the public sanc- 
tion of the collected Church. This, therefore, was 
the great step which it was enabled to take by the 
protection of Constantine ; and this was the crown- 
ing blessing which it derived from the preparation 
made for it by the fourth empire. 



A.D. 323. ABIUS. 219 

Constantine, however, as little contemplated this 
great object, as Nebuchadnezzar did the declaration 
of those mighty plans, which his connexion with 
the Church of old unfolded. When he conquered 
Maxentius, 2 and published the edict of Milan, by 
which the Christians were relieved from persecution, 
he thought apparently that he was joining a body 
which was perfectly at unity in itself. But when 
by the conquest of Licinius, ten years later, 3 he 
added the East also to his empire, he found that the 
Christian world was not absolutely free from that 
division by which the heathen were so much afflicted 
His attention was called particularly to a dispute 
which distracted the Church of Alexandria ; and he 
sent Hosius, a distinguished Spanish bishop, who 
had been a confessor (i e. had suffered torture) 
during the late persecutions, to allay it. He bade 
the disputants remember that the questions which 
divided them might as well be left undecided ; or, if 
they were entertained in secret as injurious specula- 
tions, ought at all events not to be brought forward 
to the annoyance of others. 4 " Agree, both of you, 
to admit a supreme Providence, to cultivate love and 
kindness, and to free me from anxiety and doubt." 5 

Happy was it for the whole Church, and for all 
future generations, that the bishop of Alexandria at 
that "eventful era was a man who judged things by 
a scriptural standard, and knew that tranquillity can- 
not permanently prevail, unless it is founded in truth. 
Of the temper of Arius, by whom the offensive novel- 
ties were introduced, Alexander the bishop had en- 
joyed previous experience. Arms had been brought 
up in the school of Lucian at Antioch, out of which 
issued most of the chief supporters of his errors. 
Their master Lucian seems not to have shared the 

2 a.d. 313. 3 a.d. 323 

4 Euseb. Vita Cons. xi. 69. 6 lb. 71, 72. 



2lO the five empires. a.d. 823. 

opinions of his disciples; 6 but either an irreverent 
spirit had directed their inquiries, or they had been 
infected by the external influences of their place of 
education ; for Antioch was the most luxurious city 
of the empire. And now the restored peace of the 
Church gave these Collucianists, as they called them- 
selves, an opportunity of questioning those truths 
which had been most uniformly believed among 
Christians. The attack was commenced by Arius, 
who, after having previously given proofs of insub- 
ordination, had been received on repentance as a 
presbyter of the Church of Alexandria ; but- he was 
supported by abler partisans, especially by his old 
companion Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia. Euse- 
bius the historian, intimately connected with the 
Church of Antioch, was to a certain extent also 
infected by his sentiments. 

Had Alexander yielded when Arius began to blas- 
pheme the Divine Word, — had he allowed that the 
deity of the Son of God was an uncertain matter, on 
which every one might safely have his own opinion, — 
how would he have been fulfilling his office as a wit- 
ness to that " form of sound words" which had been 
handed down to him from the apostles ? The prin- 
ciples of Arius, as was afterwards more fully ex- 
plained, implied that our Lord's supremacy meant 
nothing but that in Him was manifested a more es- 
pecial measure of that divine power which might 
in various ways be communicated to any creature. 
Thus the reverence for Him, as having of right that 
place which He claimed, would have been lost, — a 
mere arbitrary sentence would have been supposed 
to have conferred upon Him what was not naturally 
His due. This was not the system which Alexander 
had received from his predecessors ; and therefore, 

6 Bull, Diss. Fid. Nic. ii. 13, § 7. 



A.D. 325. CONSTANTINE REFERS TO THE BISHOPS. 221 

whatever offence he might give to politicians or 
worldly rulers, who thought that to minister to the 
civil tranquillity was the highest office of the Church, 
he would not allow them to be propagated in her 
fold. At first he attempted to argue with the inno- 
vator. But Arius was well stored with logical sub- 
tleties, which he opposed to the established doctrine 
of the Christian community. 7 The bishop perceiv- 
ing, as he declares, 8 that " the Church's body was 
but one, and that it was necessary to hand on the 
bond of unity," excluded the offending member from 
his communion, and esteemed even the emperor's 
wishes of less moment than the truth. 

If Constantine, therefore, would preserve that 
harmony which he especially desired to cultivate 
among his Christian subjects, it could only be by 
invoking some authority to which the Church de- 
ferred. The only such authority was in the bishops, 
to whom, as the successors of the apostles, our Lord 
had given in common the government of His people. 
Their office constituted them the natural witnesses 
of what truths had been received from the beginning. 
But as no one had as yet risen up in the Church who 
had even laid claim to that authority over his brother 
bishops which was afterwards usurped by the pope, 
there was none but Constantine himself w r ho could 
call them together. 9 This he did, not as an ecclesi- 
astical functionary, but by means of his civil power. 
Thus did the might of human society lend its aid to 
the Church of God ; and the prince called together 
his subjects to agree on those decisions to which he 
should himself submit. The object was not merely 
to determine the question of Arianism, but also to 
adjust any other differences which might exist in the 
Church, that " those who differed in any point from 

7 Soc. i. 5. 8 Soc. i. 6. 

9 Euseb. Vita Constan. iii. 5 



2:2 THE FIVE EMPIRES. a.D. 325. 

the great body of Christians might be brought into 
unity with their brethren." 10 Nice in Bithynia was 
fixed for the place of meeting ; and to it came 
bishops not only from the adjoining district, but 
from every part of the Christian world. " From all 
the Churches of Europe, Africa, and Asia, the most 
distinguished servants of God assembled. Within 
the precincts of one house of prayer were seen 
Syrians and Cilicians, men of Phoenicia and Palestine, 
of Egypt and Libya. With these came a Persian 
bishop, and another from Scythia. Pontus and Asia, 
Phrygia and Pamphylia, sent their best. Others came 
from Thrace and Macedonia, from Achaia and Epi- 
rus, and the regions beyond." 11 The decrees of the 
council were attested likewise by bishops from Gaul. 
" From Spain came that distinguished man (the 
confessor Hosius) to take his place among the rest. 
The bishop of Rome was absent on account of 
his great age, but he sent presbvters to represent 
him." 12 

The 318 bishops who assembled on this occasion 
were felt to represent so completely the judgment of 
the whole Church, that the resolutions which they 
passed were dispersed and accepted even beyond the 
limits of the Roman empire. Their representation 
of the ancient tenets of the Church was further 
strengthened by Acesius, 13 a Novatian bishop, who, 
by Constantine's favour, was introduced to their 
deliberations. He bore witness to the fact, that what 
they had agreed upon was the immemorial principle 
of the Church, from which his party had for more 
than half a century been divided. The emperor 
asked him why he dissented from the Church, if he 
admitted its doctrine. He explained his system, that 
those who had once fallen, could not be received 

10 Soc. v. 22, p. 298. ll lb. i. 8. 

n lb. i. 8. is Athen. ad Apos. § 2, p. 892. 



A.D 325. NTCENE COUNCIL. 223 

again to the full participation of Christian privileges, 
and that he could not communicate with a body 
which admitted members whose piety there had 
been reason to question. " Take a ladder, Acesius,'' 
said the emperor, " and mount up into heaven by 
yourself." 14 

But what gave the greatest authority to this 
council, was the number of bishops who had proved 
their sincerity by their sufferings in the late perse- 
cutions, and who still bore about them " the marks 
of the Lord Jesus." " A whole throng of martyrs 
might be seen gathered together. There was Pau- 
lus, bishop of Neocaesarea, who had suffered from the 
cruelty of Licinius, and was maimed both in his 
hands and feet by burning -irons. Others had lost 
their right eyes, or their right feet ; of these was 
Paphnutius, an Egyptian bishop ; 15 the same, whose 
opposition defeated the design of imposing celibacy 
on the priesthood, 16 Many distinguished laymen, too, 
were present, who though they took no part in the 
proceedings, yet were attracted by the importance of 
the occasion. One of them, himself a confessor, was 
listening to some preparatory discussions, before the 
general meeting of the council, in which an attempt 
was made to decide the great question before them 
by logical acuteness ; as though the object of the 
council was to deduce new opinions, instead of giv- 
ing testimony to the fact of what had always been 
believed. Unable to bear such perversion of the 
truth, he broke in upon the disputants with an 
earnestness which effectually silenced them, exclaim- 
ing : " It was not an array of syllogisms, nor a vain 
subtlety, which was delivered to us by our Lord and 
His apostles, but a bare doctrine, of which faith and 
a holy conversation must be the guard." 17 

"Soc. i. 10. 15 Theod. i. 7. 

16 Soc. i. 11. '? Soc. i. 8. 



224 THE FIVE EMPIRES. A . D . 325. 

The same view of the Christian doctrine, as a 
transmitted depository of revealed truths, was still 
more manifest in the answer of a confessor — an old 
man of simple character, and altogether unpractised 
in the arts of disputation — to a heathen philosopher, 
who was employing his powers of raillery to embar- 
rass some of the assembled bishops by questions to 
which it was impossible to reply. " When the old 
man seemed about to answer, some thoughtless per- 
sons, who knew him, were ready to mock ; while the 
better part were fearful lest he should expose himself 
to ridicule in the unequal contest. Yet they felt that 
a man of such a reverent character must not be op- 
posed, if he chose to speak. ' In the name of Jesus 
Christ,' he said, 'philosopher, attend ! There is one 
God, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things 
visible and invisible, who hath created all things by 
the power of His Word, and hath upheld them by 
the sanctification of His Spirit. This Word, which 
we call the Son, in pity to man's errors and degra- 
dation chose to be born of a woman, to converse 
among men, and to die for them. And He shall 
come again, as the judge of each man's actions. 
Such, without admitting of controversy, is our creed 
Trifle not, therefore, by asking for arguments of that 
which faith establishes, or by searching into the man- 
ner in which this can or cannot be effected. But 
if you believe, answer me, and allow it.' The philo- 
sopher, confounded, replied, * I believe.' And, feel- 
ing thankful for his defeat, he became a convert to 
the aged confessor, and counselled the like to those 
who had formerly argued with him ; declaring so- 
lemnly that his mind had been changed by no human 
power, but that some inexplicable influence had com- 
pelled him to become a Christian." 18 

18 Sozomen, i. 18. 



A.D. 825. ARIAN SUBTLETIES. 225 

This reverent attachment to their ancient system 
pervaded the whole council. When the Arians at- 
tempted to argue against that " form of sound words" 
which had been handed down among them, they 
" would not even hear their propositions," 19 but re- 
jected all reasonings against the faith as blasphemous. 
A confession which tne Arians offered in opposition 
to the ancient creeds, had no sooner been read than 
it was, with one consent, torn to pieces and rejected. 20 
But although the fathers knew well what doctrine 
they were resolved to maintain, and although they 
wished for nothing but the perpetuation of the an- 
cient profession of faith, yet to accomplish their pur- 
pose required no little sagacity. For they had to 
do with men, who, professing to agree with them in 
reverencing the ancient creeds, had invented such 
interpretations as left the very points ambiguous 
which they were intended to determine. Some cri- 
terion was wanted, to shew whether men received 
not merely the words of the old forms, but their 
meaning. For this purpose, all scriptural terms were 
clearly unavailing. For the terms of Scripture each 
party professed to respect, while they were totally at 
variance about their meaning. Yet the fathers knew 
that holy Scripture had one meaning alone ; and 
that its real meaning, the very mind of the Spirit, 
was that interpretation which from the apostles' days 
had been received in the Church. The Arians wished 
for a less positive and fixed belief — for such loose 
opinions as might harmonise better with any popular 
system ; and the tendency of that age, which had 
lately escaped from the superstitions of polytheism, 
was to recognise nothing but the single principle of 
the Divine unity. They entreated, therefore, that 
the council would content itself with the use of scrip- 

19 Socrates, i. 9. 20 Theodosius, i. 7. 



226 THE FIVE EMPIRES. a.D. 325, 

tural expressions, that is, that it would adopt a test 
which should leave the very point unsettled which 
it professed to resolve. Eusebius the historian, whose 
leaning was rather to the new opinions, produced the 
ancient creed of his Church of Csesarea, and asked 
why they could not be satisfied with its time-hon- 
oured expressions. 21 He was answered that this creed 
was true, but not sufficient ; since it now appeared, 
that its words could be admitted by those who re- 
jected its acknowledged meaning. 

Something, therefore, was wanted, which might 
be decisive. But when our Lord's character was 
unfolded, that He was the very Son of the Father ; 
that Deity truly belonged to Him ; that He was 
really the Son of God ; and when His attributes were 
set forth, — it might obviously be discerned, by the 
gestures and looks which were mutually exchanged 
among the Arian leaders, that they were prepared to 
assent to any such expressions, but without acknow- 
ledging the truth which the orthodox party designed 
them to convey. 22 And they soon admitted that 
these expressions " gave them no concern," for that 
men too were in Scripture " said to be gods," were 
called the sons of God ; and that any creature might 
possess divine power and attributes, in such measure 
and for such time as they were bestowed upon him. 
It was then that a new form of words was introduced, 
by whom suggested we are not informed, though 
their defence fell doubtless principally upon Atha- 
nasius, who, as deacon of the Church of Alexandria, 
in attendance on his bishop, was in truth the leading 
spirit of the assembly. 23 The place, honour, and 
dignity of our Lord were not called in question by 
the Arians, but these were declared not to have been 

21 Socrates, i. 8. 

22 Athanasius ad Apos. § i. p. 895. Theod. i. 8. 

23 Socrates, i. 8. 



A.D. 325. NICENE SYMBOL. 2^7 

His natural right, but to have been arbitrarily be- 
stowed upon a creature like ourselves. Now, among 
the words of the ancients 24 were found some which 
expressly discriminated our Lord's origin from that 
of any created being, and declared that he was ol 
one substance with the Father. These words, there* 
fore, the fathers took, and associated them to the 
creed. And their declaration, that our Lord was 
" very God, of very God, of one substance with the 
Father," has ever since continued to be the peculiar 
guardian of this main article of the faith. 

The discussion and acceptance of the Nicene 
Creed took place in Constantine's own presence, and 
under his direction, in a hall of his palace. And 
during the two months that the sittings of the coun- 
cil continued, he provided support for its members, 
as he also discharged the cost of their journeyings 
to and from the place of meeting. Through his 
influence the creed of the council was accepted, not 
only by the great majority, who heartily received, 
but even by the small body of Arianising bishops, 
who at first refused it. 25 And thus did the true faith 
appear to be established. But political circumstances 
soon afterwards arose, which, by subjecting the 
Church to trials, served to test the truth of its prin- 
ciples. Such were, the persecutions exercised by 
Constantine and his sons against those who adhered 
to the faith of the Nicene Council, when, through 
the influence of Eusebius of Nicomedia, and other 
Arian prelates, they determined to undo the work 
which they had effected. For a time they seemed 
almost to succeed, and either deceived or overbore 
the leaders of the Church. Athanasius alone stood 
firm, when all the world seemed against him. Though 

24 This is admitted by Eusebius. Socrates, i. 8, p. 25. 

25 Socrates, i. 8, p. 22. 



228 v THE FIVE EMPIRES. A.D. 379. 

five times banished, and often in danger of his life, 
yet his firmness was in the end the main instrument 
of Providence for the victory of that faith which 
God had originally given him wisdom to unfold. At 
length, when the family of Constantine had passed 
away, and Theodosius had succeeded to the govern- 
ment of the empire, 26 the principles of the Nicene 
Council were again permitted to be publicly pro- 
fessed, and soon gained universal concurrence. They 
needed no ratification, because as the whole Church 
had already borne its testimony to what it had re- 
ceived from the first, it was impossible that they 
could have any more complete sanction. It remained 
only to complete the creed, by determining those 
questions respecting the Third Person in the blessed 
Trinity which the Council of Nice had found it un- 
necessary to consider. The same objections were 
now urged against this portion of the established 
doctrine, which had formerly been advanced respect- 
ing the Divinity of our blessed Lord. On this ac- 
count, the second general council met at Constan- 
tinople. 27 The ancient creeds 28 had spoken merely 

26 A.D. 379. 2 7 A.D. 381. 

28 It has sometimes been inferred, from the silence of the 
Nicene Council respecting the last clauses in the creed, that 
the three closing articles, respecting the Catholic Church, for- 
giveness through the baptismal covenant, and the consequent 
hope of eternal life, were added at the Council of Constanti- 
nople. Bishop Bull, however, has sufficiently proved that these 
clauses made part of the original creeds of the second century, 
and were not asserted at Nice, merely because they were not 
denied. Vide Bull de Necessitate Credendi, vi. One extract 
shall be made from this most conclusive work. " I used often 
to wonder, that the fathers at Constantinople, after using those 
terms respecting the Holy Spirit, that He was ' the Lord and 
Giver of Life, which proceedeth from the Father, which, with 
the Father and the Son, together is worshipped and glorified,' 
should have added the words, ' who spake by the prophets.' 
After assigning to the Holy Ghost such magnificent attributes, 



A.D. 381. CHURCH'S VICTORY COMPLETED. 229 

in general terms of the Holy Spirit, and had then 
added those declarations concerning the Catholic 
Church, the assurance of forgiveness by the bap- 
tismal covenant, and the resurrection to another 
life, which still form the last three clauses in our 
public belief. The Council of Constantinople inserted 
those declarations which proclaim the Holy Spirit 
to be the Lord and Giver of life, and ascribe to 
Him equal worship and glory with the Father and 
the Son. 

And thus was the great work of building up the 
Church into one system of doctrine finally effected, 30 
—a work for which God's providence seemed to have 
exactly provided a season, which, if once passed, could 
never have been recalled. Already was the Roman 
state tottering to its fall, and with the death of Theo- 
dosius it was finally broken up, never to be rejoined. 31 
But so completely was this fourth empire destined to 
be the precursor, which should vanish at the final 
establishment of Messiah's kingdom, that it was not 
till the reign of this prince, the last emperor who 
swayed from east to west, that the Christian was 
fully substituted for the pagan worship. The altar 

that He was the Lord, that He bestowed life, that He pro- 
ceeded from the Father, that He was entitled to the same glory 
and worship with the Father and the Son, it seemed to me 
almost a bathos to add that ' He spake by the prophets.' But 
after I understood that the ancient creed of the Eastern Church 
had contained the words, • the Comforter, who spake by the 
prophets,' I understood that the holy synod had substituted for 
the word ' Comforter' those magnificent terms, in order that it 
might more clearly testify the true Deity of the Holy Ghost 
against Macedonius, and had then added the words, ' who spake 
by the prophets,' because this was part of the ancient creed." 
-§ 12. 

30 The two remaining general councils, at Ephesus and 
Chalcedon, condemned the Nestorian and Eutychian heresies, 
but made no alteration in the Creed. 

a a.d 395. 

X 



230 THE FIVE EMPIRES. A.D. 395. 

of victory, which had still remained in the Roman 
senate, 32 was in his days finally condemned ; " and 
the gods of antiquity were dragged in triumph at the 
chariot-wheels of Theodosius." 33 This work had been 
begun by Constantine, and he had also been the first 
to make that formal division of the empire to which 
the measures of Diocletian tended, by apportioning 
it among his children. But its separate parts had 
speedily been reunited under his kinsman, the apos- 
tate Julian, who had endeavoured, with the integrity 
of the empire, to revive its ancient faith. Both the 
one and the other were finally destroyed by Theodo- 
sius, who pronounced the decisive condemnation of 
paganism ; and whose two sons, Arcadius and Hono- 
rius, receiving respectively the inheritance of the East 
and West, consummated the partition of the Roman 
dominions. This, therefore, is the natural conclu- 
sion of ancient history; and thus ended the fourth 
empire — its task performed. 

And now nothing remains but to unfold the for- 
tunes of that fifth kingdom, of which the origin and 
growth have already been described. Henceforth it 
was the central figure which occupied the stage of 
earth, the sole principle of connexion among the 
nations of the world. Like its predecessors, it has 
been exposed to assaults from without and treachery 
from within ; but as it is unlike them in the nature of 
its existence, so does it differ from them in the per- 
manence of its sway. Still does it survive, to mock 
the presumption of those abject and desperate rebels, 
w r ho think that their petty opposition can defeat the 
purposes of the Most High. The fall of the fourth 
monarchy was the hour of its final confirmation. 
Rome had done it homage, but not till its own ruin 
was at hand. The new powers which were henceforth 

82 a.d. 384 M Gibbon, cap, xxviii. p. J 00 



A.D. 395. FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 231 

to occupy the world found it already in possession. 
For a change was approaching, more important than 
the transfer of dynasties, or the alteration of the titles 
and conditions of soverign power. The very sub- 
stance of which society consisted — the languages and 
races of men — were to be renewed. Hitherto the 
Church had been built of a people, whom the license 
and sensuality of Rome, or the pride and false phi- 
losophy of Greece, had debased and corrupted. A 
purer stock was to supply the material for its future 
extension. A cloud had arisen in the utmost east, 
which already covered the heavens with its black- 
ness, and indicated the approaching storm. In the 
interval between Constantine and Theodosius, the 
Huns, driven from their original seat near the Wall 
of China, had spread themselves as far as the plains 
of Muscovy. The Gothic nation, pressed by their 
superincumbent weight, had already left the German 
forests, had crossed the Danube, to the number of 
above a million of persons, and fixed themselves 
within the dominions of Rome. 34 Other nations, the 
parents, like them, of the European race, were ready 
for a final spring upon the empire. Within a few 
years after the death of Theodosius, the Goths were 
in possession of Rome. 35 As yet they seemed wait- 
ing till the full work was accomplished of that de- 
generate race, which was to hand on to them the 
blessings of the Church of God. Its success in the 
new soil of their rude but manly natures — its con- 
quest over their wild superstition — its dangers from 
their ignorance, and from that spiritual usurper, the 
phantom of the departed empire, whose power arose 
from the associations of its ancient greatness — the 
final establishment of Christ's kingdom throughout 

34 a.d. 376. s 5 A.D. 410. 



232 



THE FIVE EMP1EBS. 



the nations which now make up the central field plot 
of the world— its superior purity in those portions 
of European society which were least mingled with 
the blood of ancient Rome ;— this is the grand sub- 
ject of modern history. 







"««U« ; : ;: 



ROMAN FOKUM. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



4004 Creation. 

3017 Enoch's translation. 

2348 Flood. 

2247 Confusion of tongues. Peleg. The earth divided. 

2200 Commencement of Nimrod's empire. 

2008 Peleg's death. 

2007 Semiramis began to reign. 

1921 Call of Abraham. 

1807 Shepherd-kings rule in Egypt. 

1706 Jacob goes into Egypt. 

1491 Exodus of Israel. 

1451 Israelites enter Canaan. 

1184 Trojan war. 

1117 Samson's death. 

1116 Samuel judges Israel. 

1 1 02 Conquest of Peloponnesus by the Heraclidae. 

1048 David king of all Israel. 

1015 Solomon king. 

975 Jeroboam and Rehoboam kings. 

918 Ahab king of Israel. 

884 Lycurgus the Spartan legislator. 

753 Founding of Rome. 

747 Death of Sardanapalus. Assyrian empire divided. 

721 Israel carried captive by Shalmanezer. 

710 Sennacherib invades Judah. 

660 Psammetichus introduces Greeks into Egypt. 

608 Josiah defeated by Pharaoh-Necho. 

604 Nebuchadnezzar reunites the Assyrian empire. His 
victory over Necho at Carchemish. 

587 Jerusalem taken. Captivity. 

571 Egypt overrun by Nebuchadnezzar. 

569 Pharaoh- Hophra, or Apries, slain by Amasis. 



234 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 

P.O. 

560 Pisistratus tyrant of Athens. 
559 Death of Solon the Athenian legislator. 
553 Medes and Persians begin to grow in power. 
548 Croesus defeated by Cyrus. 
538 Cyrus takes Babylon. 
536 Jews return from captivity. 
522 Usurpation of Smerdis the Magian. 
521 Darius Hystaspes. 

519 Darius Hystaspes allows the Temple to be rebuilt. 
514 Murder of Hipparchus. 
510 Hippias finally expelled from Athens. 
509 Kings banished from Rome. 
504 The Ionian revolt. Saidis burnt. 
490 Battle of Marathon. 
485 Xerxes king. 
481 Xerxes invades Greece. 
480 Leonidas defends Thermopylae. 
479 Battle of Plataea. 

458 Ahasuerus marries Esther. Ezra sent to Jerusalem, 
445 Nehemiah sent to Jerusalem. 
431 Peloponnesian war begins. 
404 Athens taken by Lysander. 

401 Expedition of the 10,000 under the younger Cyrus. 
400 Death of Socrates. 
390 Rome burnt by the Gauls. 
3/1 Battle of Leuctra. 
362 Battle of Mantinsea. 
360 Philip king of Macedon. 
334 Alexander the Great enters Asia. Granicus. 
333 Battle of Issus. 

331 Persian empire finally overthrown. Arbela. 
323 Death of Alexander the Great. 

301 Battle of Ipsus. Final partition of Alexander's em- 
pire. 
264 First Punic war. 
218 Second Punic war. 
216 Battle of Cannae. 

197 Philip king of Macedon defeated by the Romans. 
190 Antiochus defeated by the Romans. 
170 Antiochus Epiphanes persecutes the Jews 
168 Second Macedonian war. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLK. 236 

B.C. 

149 Third Punic war. 

146 Romans subdue Greece. Corinth and Carthage de- 
stroyed. 
133 Tiberius Gracchus. 
121 Caius Gracchus. 
101 Marius defeats the Cimbri. 
82 Sylla dictator. 
60 The first triumvirate. 

48 Julius Csesar makes himself supreme of Rome. Bat- 
tle of Pharsalia. 
44 Julius Caesar assassinated. 
31 Augustus emperor of Rome. Battle of Actium. 
3 Our Lord's birth. 



9 Our Lord goes up to the Temple. 
14 Augustus dies. Tiberius becomes emperor. 

31 Crucifixion. St. Paul's conversion. 

32 St. Peter preaches to Cornelius. 

45 St. Paul and St. Barnabas appointed apostles. 

46 Council at Jerusalem. 
54 Nero becomes emperor. 

56 St. Paul carried captive to Rome. 

68 Martyrdom of St. Paul and St. Peter 

69 Vespasian becomes emperor. 

70 Destruction of Jerusalem. St. Clement writes to the 

Corinthians. 

93 St. John at Patmos. Book of Revelation. 

94. Polycarp appointed bishop of Smyrna by St. John. 

96 St. John writes his Gospel. 

98 Trajan becomes emperor. 
100 St. John's death. 
107 St. Ignatius martyred. 
117 Hadrian becomes emperor. 
1 20 Irenseus is born. 

135 Jews banished from Judaea by the Romans. 
150 Hegesippus commences his travels. Tertullian born. 
158 St. Polycarp visits Rome in the time of Anicetus. 
165 Death of Justin Martvr. 



236 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 

A.D. 

167 St. Poly carp martyred. 

168 Montanus the schismatic. 

177 Persecutions at Lyons and Vienne. Pothinus mar- 
tyred. 
188 Pantasnus goes to India as a missionary. 
199 Tertullian becomes a Montanist. 
250 Decian persecution. 
258 Cyprian martyred. 
284 Diocletian emperor. 
286 Maximian appointed emperor. 
298 Marcellus martyred. 
303 Last persecution begins. 

305 Diocletian and Maximian abdicate. 

306 Constantius dies. Constantine becomes Csesar. 

312 Constantine marches into Italy, and dethrones Max- 

entius. Vision of the Cross. 

313 Edict of Milan, proclaiming toleration to Christians. 

323 Constantine gives full liberty to Christians. 

324 Licinius defeated. Constantine sole emperor. 

325 Council of Nice. 
337 Constantine dies. 
361 Julian the apostate. 
376 The Goths enter Thrace. 

379 Theodosius the Great emperor. 
381 Second general Council of Constantinople. 
395 Roman empire divided between Arcadius and Ho- 
norius. 



Abraham's call, 17. 

Acesius the Novatian, 222. 

Alcibiades persuades the Athe- 
nians to invade Sicily, 98. 

Alexander the Great, 117. 

Alexandria founded, 122. 

Antiochus Epiphanes, 126. 

Apostles, their practice bind- 
ing on Christians, 150. 

, perpetuity of their 

office, 153. 

Arius, 219. 

Ark, long remembered, 8. 

Assyrian empire founded, 13. 

Athanasius, 227. 

Athenian character, 89. 

Athens taken by Sparta, 99. 

the seat of arts, 101. 

its low morality shewn 

by the plague, 102. 

Babel, the first attempt at uni- 
versal empire, 10. 

Babylon, its commerce and 
greatness, 52. 

taken by Cyrus, 69. 

, Alexander's plans for 

its restoration, 121. 

Bactria, its early wealth, 14. 

Balaam, 29. 



Bishops, at first the delegates 
of the apostles, 153. 

, their order fully es- 
tablished by the apostles oa 
the destruction of Jerusa- 
lem, 165. 

Caesar, 141. 

Cain, the founder of city -life, 
4. 

Captivity of Israel, 46. 

of Judah, 56. 

Carthage, 130. 

Catholic, impropriety of giv- 
ing that name to the Roma- 
nists, 201. 

Chaldeans, their origin, 51. 

Church in being before Scrip- 
ture was written, 186. 

Church of England refers to 
the testimony of the early 
Fathers, 189. 

Colleges of prophets, like ca- 
thedrals, the centres of reli- 
gious worship, 34. 

Constantine sought support 
from the Church, 212. 

, parallel between his 

vi.-ion and Nebuchadnez- 
zar's, 214. 



238 



INDEX. 



Constantine refers Church- 
matters to the bishops, 
221. 

Croesus consults the oracle at 
Delphi, 66. 

Creed, its antiquity, 190. 

, its last clauses earlier 

than the council of Nice, 
218. 

Cyprian, his statement of the 
corruption of Christians, 
197. 

Cyrus's education, 63. 

Cyrus the younger invades 
Persia, 111. 

Darius Hystaspes consolidates 

the Persian state, 74. 
Diocletian a refounder of 

Rome, 205. 
Diocletian supposes he has 

extinguished Christianity, 

210. 

Egypt, its early settlement, 21. 

conquered by Camby- 

ses, 71. 

Elijah a restorer of God's 
service, 45. 

Enoch contrasted with La- 
mech, 5. 

Epaminondas, his improve- 
ments in the art of war, 113. 

Ezra sent to Jerusalem, 110. 

Grecian character, 79. 
Gibbon, his unfairness, 209. 

Hegesippus, 184. 



Herod's alarm at our Lord's 

birth, 147. 
Homer, 80. 
Hosius sent to Constantine 

to allay Arian disputes, 219. 

Isaiah's prophecy described, 

50. 
Israel led out of Egypt, 27. 
•, its election typical of 

the election of Christians 

at baptism, 28. 

Jeroboam causes a schism in 
the Jewish Church, 43. 

Jerusalem, its destruction 
shewed the Jewish polity 
ended, 162. 

Kingdom of heaven implied 
an outward system, 150. 

Lamech, meaning of his 
speech, 5. 

Languages shew national con- 
nexion, 10. 

Law of Moses, its parts and 
objects, 29. 

, how it carried on 

men's minds to the future 
kingdom, 30. 

Maccabees, 124. 

Magian attempt to bring back 

the sceptre to the Medes, 71. 
Marathon, battle of, 76. 
Marcellus's martyrdom, 205. 
Martyrdom of St. Ignatius, 

177. 



INDEX. 



239 



Montanus, 195. 

Nebuchadnezzar, hisvictories, 

55. 

, his dream, 58. 

Nice, general council of, 222. 
Nicene Creed, how guarded, 

227. 
Nimrod, the first conqueror, 

9. 
Nineveh destroyed, 15. 
Noah's prophecy, 9. 
Novatian, 198. 

Ophir, where, 40. 
Oracles of ancients, 66. 
Oroetes, a rebellious satrap, 
74. 

Pacian, 200. 

Palestine, its martyrs, 209. 

Peloponnesian war, 97. 

Persecution of Diocletian, 207. 

Persians superior to the other 
Orientals, 64. 

Persian empire overthrown, 
135. 

Petfa, 39. 

Phoenician cities, 36. 

Pharaoh-Necho, 25. 

Philip of Macedon, 113. 

Philosophers, their four chief 
schools, 107. 

Platsea, battle of, 91. 

Plato's Polity, 105. 

Polycarp's martyrdom, 179. 

Prediction of the spiritual 
kingdom given to the tem- 
poral power, 58. 



Prophecies, their meaning 
handed down in the Jewish 
Church, 123. 

Pyramids, 24. 

Pythagoras, 103. 

Rome built, 128. 
Roman empire extended, 135. 
Rome the iron empire, 136. 
■ , its fall, 231. 

St. Clement's epistle, 171. 
St. James, our Lord's cousin, 
an apostle, but not of the 
twelve, 158. 

St. Paul and St. Barnabas 
chosen apostles, 155. 

Sacraments, the means of 
union with Christ's king- 
dom, 152. 

Salamis, battle of, 91. 

Samson, celebrated under the 
name of Hercules, 32. 

Samuel, his peculiar commis- 
sion, 33. 

founds colleges of pro- 
phets, 34. 

Sardanapalus, 15. 

Schism, its original principle, 
194-9. 

Scythians, invaded by Darius, 
74. 

Semiramis invades India, 14. 

Septuagint, 123. 

Seth, the father of the spiri- 
tual seed, 4. 

Sidonians, 35. 

Society, arose from the family 
relation, 3. 



240 ini 

Socrates, the apostle of con- 
science, 104. 

Solomon, his wisdom and 
wealth, 35. 

Solon, 88. 

Sophists, 103. 

Spain, its early wealth, 38. 

Succession of priesthood, dis- 
regarded by Jeroboam, 43. 

Temple, our Lord's presence 
the glory of second, 70. 

Ten thousand, their retreat, 
112. 

Thebes aspires to the rule of 
Greece, 113. 



tf<L 
131 

Themistocles incites the Athe- 
nians to defence, 90. 

Thermopylae defended by three 
hundred Spartans, 86. 

Theodosius the Great finally 
extinguishes paganism in 
the Roman empire, 229. 

finally divides the em- 
pire, 230. 

Tyre, its trade, 37. 

, its sieges, 56, 1 1 8. 

Unity of the Church, 183. 
Xerxes invades Greece, 87 




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